The word salvation is defined as preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss. Most people would naturally jump at an opportunity to save themselves from the aforementioned negative and unpleasant consequences, regardless of the means needed to achieve it. It is the goal of most religions and Christianity in particular, to offer believers salvation from punishment due to their sins. Specifically, a ritual for salvation in Christian tradition offers the steadfast believer undeniable assurance that they are safe, and in a short story by Langston Hughes, he is a young boy about to undergo the said ritual. But, ironically, on this day, instead of his faith being cemented and strengthened, it was unfortunately completely shattered due to a misunderstanding. Naivety is a trait often thought of in connection to children and their thought processes - the concept that they are unable to comprehend certain events and ideas the way older people might. This concept comes into play in the story - leading to the drastic results. However, the story is much more than the narrative of a young boy losing his trust in adults due to a misunderstanding - it is a story filled with symbolism and metaphor that goes far beyond what first meets the eye. Delving into Hughes’ history helps reveal more about the message he had in mind while writing the story, and helps the reader to understand more effectively the impact of that message in “Salvation”. By doing so, it is apparent that because of the experience described in the narrative, Hughes was driven to search for salvation by other means throughout his life, and was inspired to write the story to share the moment his journey started with others who might be able to relate and understand his message.
The story begins in the first person point of view and is told in a reflective voice and a tone characterized by dry humor. It almost allows the reader to feel as though they are seated across from Hughes, and this conversational style helps them to connect deeper with him and to absorb the narrative in a manner almost like the transfer of memories from one mind to another. The descriptions are very vivid and made more colorful with the narrator’s inner thoughts being included - adding to the effect of the story being told from a child’s point of view. Hughes summarizes his mentality and understanding of religion through one of these mental dialogues in the story,
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My aunt told me that 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! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. (Hughes 1)
Up until this point, all knowledge and comprehension of the meaning of salvation of religion in the mind of young Hughes is based on what he has heard (and taken very literally) from those older than him. He states that he found their advanced age to be quite enough to validate their words and leave no doubt in his mind that that was how salvation was supposed to occur. Naturally, it was not quite like described. It’s most plausible that the adults in this story
One of the main themes of the story is irony - how a ritual intended to strengthen a child’s faith ended up completely breaking it. The story turns out to be based on an experience Hughes had when he was twelve that left him “spiritually traumatized”, so to speak. Hughes himself was not a religious person as an adult, perhaps largely due to this tragic experience, but he was what some might call a thinker of religion. He often discussed it in his works. Langston Hughes’ religious troubles are assumed to have started when he had the experience described in this short story and to have shaped his thoughts on religion for the rest of his life. As described in an article, it was a sort of “spiritual trauma” for Hughes, and as he learned to heal from it throughout his life he began to feel freer to think about religion and the concept of salvation in broader aspects than he might have had his “salvation” gone as it should have. If Hughes had found, that day, a cemented connection to Christianity as had been intended, he would have continued to think about salvation and spirituality through the lens of his faith. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, the lack of that lens over his vision allowed him to see from other perspectives and open his mind to other possibilities and theories.
Langston Hughes was born in 1902 in Missouri, and his parents divorced while he was still a child. This might have been a factor in why he was a more sensitive sort of child as shown in “Salvation,” and perhaps it was also a reason why he clung to his faith more strongly than other children of his age tended to. Hughes’ works as an adult seemed to follow a theme,
in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever-decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read . . . (Gibson via poetry.org)
Hughes lived for a good portion of his life in Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City that was primarily populated by African Americans. This city undoubtedly influenced his creativity and helped him connect to his culture and roots by surrounding himself with his people and learning their stories as he began to share his own. Hughes wrote for his people, and that was what made him such a powerful and celebrated writer. His audience felt a connection to him because they shared similar cultural experiences, and this helped his success.
Albeit not being what one might call a religious person, Hughes thought about religion profusely. For the rest of his life after that incident in Kansas, he found himself contemplating religion and searching for other ways to find meaning in life. He was neither an atheist nor necessarily a believer, but he was very notably someone on a quest for a greater purpose, and who desired to puzzle out the riddles of life and human existence.
The final line in the story helps to explain why Hughes lost his faith at a time when it was supposed to be made stronger - somehow the adults around him expected that the child would somehow understand that either the experience was to be metaphorical (which Hughes didn’t) or understand that lying was expected of them. Children, especially those under 10, don’t have the same concept of faith that adults do because they tend to take things very literally. Therefore, Hughes tries to show how damaging it can be to expect the impossible of children through these religious practices - especially on more sensitive types like he was. Although the other children around him seemed to be fine with lying and getting out of the uncomfortable situation they were put in, Hughes appears to have been a very serious and reflective child who wanted salvation to happen.
“I was crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church.” (Hughes 2)
Thus Hughes, albeit being nonreligious, managed to create a powerful and ironic to explain this perspective on adults preaching religion to children who are too young to fully appreciate and understand it.
However, while he was not religious, he was still in search of fulfillment as discussed by Wallace Best.
“Hughes had a failed salvation experience, but it by no means suggests that he didn’t find types of salvation throughout his life. What I suggest is that salvation becomes a bit of an obsession for him, and he wrote quite a lot about the topic of redemption—how one is redeemed, how one is saved. Hughes had that traumatic night when he failed to see Jesus, but it didn’t cut him off from the pursuit to understand what it means to be saved, what religion is, and its function in daily life—on a personal level and a communal level.” (Best 1)
In the story, he shows how the child understands that one of the main values of faith is honesty and therefore lying is extra difficult for him, and realizing that he had to lie to be “saved” breaks his faith.
“ I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn’t seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockers legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons, and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I’d better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.” (Hughes 2)
Hughes shows through this story that his perspective on parents forcing their children to be saved at such a young age when they don’t even fully comprehend what is happening is a bad practice and has the opposite effect of taking away their faith.
“[I] hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.” (Hughes 2)
Some might say that Hughes is not qualified to write on religion and religious practices, being nonreligious himself. To that, Wallace Best says, “Just because Hughes cannot—and he does not—explicitly state or position himself as a religious believer, one cannot, then, discount his works on religion. He wasn’t a believer, and certainly not a believer in that conventional way that we have come to understand believers. Rather than a religious thinker, he is a thinker about religion.” (Best 1)
Therefore, Hughes’ personal views on religion and experiences inspired and shaped the narrative in “Salvation”. By analyzing Hughes’ history and his perspective, the message of “Salvation” becomes more coherent and deeper than one might consider it to be at first read. Through irony and tasteful storytelling, Hughes warns the readers of the dangers of asking children what they are unable to understand, thereby risking permanent damage to their beliefs.
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