Salvation is a story from The Big Sea, which was written by Langston Hughes, an African American poet, playwright and fiction writer. He was one was the earliest innovators of the then new literary art form, jazz poetry. This is a story that took place during the author’s childhood, when he was going on thirteen. This story is about how he lost his faith as a child when during a revival meeting he remained the lone “young lamb” that did not see Jesus. In the end, the young Langston decided to deceive the whole congregation by pretending that Jesus had come to him. Hughes shows us how the thoughts and actions of the people around us can affect our actions, and how complete trust and innocence can result in a complete lost of faith. Hughes uses vivid imagery and simple language to convey a believable child’s point of view. Hughes starts his essay with two contradicting statements: that he “was saved from sin…but not really saved” (). This is a signal to the reader that the title Salvation does not mean what one would think it means. Initially the author went to a revival meeting at his aunt’s church with the full intention of being saved. She told him “when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on!” (). His use of exclamation marks punctuating these sentences portrays a picture of a child who was excited and enthused about this upcoming event. He completely believed his aunt and his belief in her was supported because other older people said the same, and he believed “they ought to know” (). However, nothing happened to him, but young Langston continued to sit and wait when all the other children had gone to the altar to be saved because he wanted to see Jesus. Finally he stood up anyways due to the pressure of his aunt, the preacher, and the whole congregation who he said “prayed for him alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices” (). In the end, instead of being saved like his aunt promised, young Langston was left believing that he had sin. He did not “believe that there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help [him]” ().
Hughes tells his story in very simple language but with vivid imagery like how a child would see it. The story is also told solely from young Hughes point of view so that the reader could easily put himself/herself into the author’s shoes and feel the pressure that was put on the young boy and understand how one would do the same thing he did. He also uses very vivid imagery to portray to the reader the point of view of a child, so that one could see out of the child’s eyes and see the “old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands” and how the “whole building rocked with prayer and song” (). When he was the last child to not come to the altar, young Langston showed the petulance and stubbornness of a child by waiting and waiting because “nothing happened to [him]. Nothing!” (). The pressure for him to go to the altar and be saved even though he saw nothing increased when all was focused on him, his aunt was sobbing his name, and the preacher repeating over and over again, “why don’t you come? Why don’t you come and be saved? Why don’t you come? (). Finally young Langston caved under the immense pressure and expectation placed on him and came to the altar with the other children, and the reader comes to realize that he/she would do the same thing in a Langston’s place.
Langston Hughes’ uses simple language and first person narrative to tell a vivid and relatable story of the pressures of society and the degradation of innocence. The story is a young boy who did not receive salvation. However, Hughes starts off the story as an adult man saying he was saved from sin when he was thirteen, and ends the story as a boy who no longer believed Jesus exists. This indicates that he was saved from sin because he now believed that sin, like Jesus, did not exist due to this event in this childhood. In this sense he was saved from sin, but not in the way the reader would expect.