"Salvation"

In  Langston Hughes essay "Salvation" (1940) Langston claims to have been saved from sin at the age of thirteen but not saved as he thought he would be. Hughes was supposed to attend revival and on the last day he was supposed to see Jesus and be saved from sin, the only problem was that he didn’t see Jesus. He approached the alter anyway and he felt guilty because of this action, the author stands up and joins the other children in order to make the people in the church happy. I feel this essay was intended to reach out to anybody that felt pressured to do something they knew was wrong, and I felt the author just wanted to inform others of what really happened to clear his guilty conscience.

I do not agree with author on the fact that he does not believe in Jesus. I feel that Hughes was misled and really expected someone of magnificent quality to appear and was disappointed when he didn’t. If his aunt would have vividly explained what she meant by Jesus appearing he may have felt differently about what happened. I also feel that he is using his own guilt to make himself be presented as the victim. He had a choice whether or not to stand up or stay seated. If he knew it was wrong he should have stayed seated and told the congregation that he was not ready yet. I'm sure there wouldn't have been as much confusion as he thought there would be.

Do I believe that Langston believes that there is really not a god, or was he just a child with a vivid imagination? I believe that Langston did truly believe in god, I don't think that he would have cried over not seeing him if he did not believe in God. I also believe that Langston was just a child that had a vivid imagination, an imagination that swallowed the description of God walking into his life when he was saved. As "Young Lambs" all of the children that were there to be saved could only think that God was going to walk bust through the doors of the church, because they weren't given a proper explanation.