Discussion Topic
Hughes's attitude and purpose in recalling the incident in "Salvation."
Summary:
In "Salvation," Hughes's attitude is one of disillusionment and regret. His purpose in recalling the incident is to highlight the profound impact that societal and familial expectations can have on an individual, especially on a young person's understanding of faith and truth. The experience led him to question the sincerity of religious expressions and the authenticity of his own beliefs.
What is Hughes' attitude in "Salvation" when recalling the incident?
Langston Hughes’ short piece “Salvation” is part of his book-length autobiography The Big Sea (1940), but it is often reprinted alone in literature and writing textbooks as an example of a sketch, an essay, or even a short story. Whatever you choose call the piece, it certainly can be analyzed for a number of literary elements or devices, including conflict and resolution, irony, narrator, and tone.
One online reference (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html) defines “tone” as “the writer's attitude toward the material and/or readers. Tone may be playful, formal, intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc.” Tone is often expressed through the choice of individual words as well as through the arrangement or words and ideas in the piece. Even a short work such as “Salvation” can expresses a range of attitudes that are held by the writer or narrator toward the subject or the...
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audience.
The narrator in “Salvation” is an adult man looking back on a particular experience that he had when he was 13 years old. He views this experience with what might be called cynicism, sarcasm, or perhaps an appreciation of the irony of the experience, and that cynicism or ironic view may reflect Hughes’ own critical view of organized religion.
One phrase that stands out for me as an example of the narrator’s cynical, sarcastic, or ironic view is his repeated use of the phrase “young sinners” to talk about his age group and himself. The term is used once in quotation marks to report the words of the preacher, but it is also used once by the narrator himself, without quotation marks. Other words and phrases that seem ironic to me are the repeated references to lying in church and even to one boy’s use of the phrase “God damn!” just seconds before he walks up to the mourners’ bench.
At the same time, however, I get the sense that the narrator sees real value or beauty in African American popular culture, including the behavior of everyone at the revival meeting. He describes the speeches and behaviors in rich detail, bringing the characters to life, and, by the end of the piece, I do not get the sense that I have been prompted to be overly critical of Aunt Reed or the people at her church. Many of Hughes’ other works reflect this divided or complex attitude toward African American religious and secular cultures. See, for example, his first and second novels, Not Without Laughter and Tambourines to Glory.
See the enotes threads below for more discussion of "Salvation."
What is Hughes's purpose in recalling the event in "Salvation"?
In "Salvation" Hughes provides us with a frank and open account of his childhood loss of faith. He feels it is important to account for how and why this momentous event occurred. For many people, losing faith is something that happens over time. Yet for young Langston Hughes, it was a different story. His loss of faith was sudden, unexpected, and for a time, quite traumatizing. This was an experience which came, ironically, like a religious epiphany, leaving him feeling utterly helpless and confused.
That Hughes feels the need to write about this sudden loss of faith years after it happened suggests that it was a formative experience in his life, something that put him on a completely different path. At the same time, he doesn't deny that, at one point in his life, his faith meant everything to him and that he was part of a vibrant congregation. Hughes wants the reader to understand that he didn't give up his faith lightly; it was a shattering experience that came to him right out of the blue. He really wanted to believe with all his heart and soul, but he just couldn't.