whole building rocked with prayer and song.

These sentences are embedded in paragraphs with greater details. The sentences that are isolated—a paragraph unto themselves—also begin with conjunctions as a continuation of the story, but they indicate a contrast by their isolation. We see it first in this sentence:

Still I kept waiting to see Jesus.

And again, in this one:

So I got up.

The effect is to create a pause in the music. While the paragraphs full of “ands” keep the reader going, line by line, these two brief sentences instruct the reader to wait, just as the audience is waiting and watching the twelve year old Hughes. Both of these isolated sentences indicate the drama of the evening, which is not only the struggle of good and evil, saved and unsaved, but the simple internal struggle of a young boy, pressured by so many adults to become initiated into the unknown.

In his autobiographical short story titled "Salvation," Langston Hughes uses long sentences to vividly dramatize the music and rhythm found at an event like an African-American church revival. One example of a long sentence that dramatizes the event is the following:

The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold.

Through this one sentence, the reader can hear the lengthy, powerful sermon spoken by the preacher. More importantly, the reader can hear the spots where the preacher paused in his sermon for dramatic emphasis, spots that permitted the members of the congregation to let out "moans and shouts and lonely cries." In addition, the reader can hear the preacher as he sang his song about salvation. All of these images help dramatize for the reader the music and rhythms of what transpired at the revival.

Yet, Hughes also contrasts his long sentences with short sentences to characterize the thoughts and feelings of the children at the revival. For example, in the third paragraph in which he uses long sentences to dramatize the preacher's sermon, the final sentences are short such as, "But most of us just sat there." The stark contrast between long and short sentences show us how little the children understand and relate to what's going on around them by showing how different the children still are from the adults around them. In characterizing the children's differences, the short sentences help to characterize the bewilderment, frustration, and even fright felt by some of the children. Characterizing the children, especially himself, as bewildered, frustrated, frightened, and even sad helps underscore his point that adults must tread carefully when it comes to explaining matters of spirituality to children.