Bad Pressure
“Salvation” is an autobiography written by Langston Hughes, one of the greatest poets and playwrights in America. In short narrative, Hughes pictures an incident of himself from when he was thirteen that had affected his life a lot. The story is about an event that takes place in his aunt’s church; before the event he was repeatedly told by his aunt that he will be saved by Jesus; that “when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside. She said that you could hear and feel Jesus in your soul.” Hughes himself was a young boy that wanted and was exited about seeing Jesus in the ceremony. At the day of the ceremony after the preacher’s preach the youngsters were taken to the front row so they can be brought to Christ. As Hughes was trying and waiting to see Jesus, all the other kids, except for one sitting next to him, had seen and been saved by Jesus. With all the pressure on the two last boys, the boy sitting next to Langston decides to lie and fake that he saw Jesus Christ and was saved; after considering that the boy has gotten away so easily with such a big lie, it becomes easy for him to do the same thing. As he goes on and say’s “ so I decided that maybe save further trouble, I’d better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up to be saved.” So he fell into the trap of tying to prove and please the big crowd that was pressuring him y showing that he has seen the Christ. Even with all the soaring cheers of the big crowd Langston felt empty and ashamed in the inside.
As the essay begins Hughes assumes the persona of himself as an adolescence born and raised into a religious family that was also running a church. So from the beginning of his life he was introduced to God and the Christ and must have had strong beliefs towards them. Although Langston still comes off as a confused and unconvinced young boy who does not know how to handle the situation. At the end he looses his faith in religion as he cries...