him by his family regarding an authentic conversion does not align with what he experiences at the moment. He is forced to accept salvation because he feels bad for making the crowd wait for him. He never experiences or sees Jesus the way his family says he will, and ultimately he succumbs to the pressure of the crowd by lying that he has been converted. Hughes regrets his dishonesty at the end, saying,

“I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church that 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.”

One of the claims of Langston Hughes's short story "Salvation" is that children understand the lies and deceptions of the adult world. While the narrator's aunt wants him to accept Jesus and be saved, the narrator, who is twelve years old, knows that he can fake being saved. His friend Westley decided to feign being saved because he is simply tired of sitting on the church bench in the heat. The narrator's aunt is praying for the narrator's salvation, and he knows that although he has not actually seen Jesus, he can lie. His friend lied and was not struck by lightning, so the narrator decides to do the same thing. His lie is greeted with joy and celebration by the members of the church. As a result, the narrator cries, feeling that religion is one of the deceptions of the adult world. Rather than having been saved, the narrator gains insight into how to lie to make others happy.

Mood is defined as the way an author intends for the reader to respond emotionally to the text. An author’s tone, or attitude, directly establishes mood. So, the best place to start is to examine Hughes's diction and imagery.

At his Auntie’s church revival, Hughes states, “The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell.” The repetitive nature of “preacher preached” emphasizes the minister’s dogmatic style. Words like “rhythmical,” “moans,” “shouts,” and “cries” underscore the musical, vocal quality of the sermon. This line from the essay creates an religiously ecstatic mood since Hughes views all of this as “wonderful.”

As the pastor and worshippers urge Hughes to be saved, the mood grows anxious, as evidenced when Hughes states “And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting—but he didn't come.” The repetition of “waiting” here suggests that a significant amount of time has passed, and Hughes just wants to please his Auntie and her church by joining the other children who were saved during the revival.

To avoid embarrassing his Auntie, Hughes decides to lie and say Jesus has revealed himself as he “gets up” off the bench. The church erupts in approval, which Hughes describes using metaphors: “sea of shouting” and “waves of rejoicing.” The exuberant mood of the churchgoers stands in sharp contrast with Hughes’s internal reaction. The dramatic irony (readers know Hughes lied) creates a discordant mood where Hughes feels alienated from his surroundings.

Finally, in the last paragraph of the essay, Hughes explains how he cried alone in his bed that night because he doesn’t “believe there [is] a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.” This line creates a sympathetic mood because the reader pities the young, confused version of Hughes who had to grapple with such difficult issues without the guidance of adults—who were so blinded by what they wanted to see that they were unable to see the truth.

In the essay “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, he refers to a religious revival. He starts his essay with:

I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved. It happened like this. There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed's church. Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds.

With this, Langston Hughes describes a typical church revival. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a church revival is “an often highly emotional evangelistic meeting or series of meetings.” Generally, revival services are intended to bring believers back to a renewed commitment and spirituality—or to revive their internal spirituality. Revival services can last for several days or even one to two weeks. Many times, the church will also ask an evangelist from another church to speak.

Revival services are generally marked by interaction with the congregation, as people come up to the alter or just stand where they are in the pew to shout or to share their stories. In fact, revival services are also generally characterized by a more fervent energy level than at other prayer services, with people singing loudly and often swaying to the rhythm of the songs and the preacher’s words and sermon. This is why the writer says, “Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting.” As the energy level rises at a revival service, people sometimes lose their inhibitions and shout in response to the preacher’s words or to the music.

Generally, the purpose of the revival service is to lead people to salvation, as the service awakens their spirituality and joyful religious fervor. In fact, Langston Hughes continues to say that,

Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, "to bring the young lambs to the fold."

In "Salvation," Langston Hughes sends the message that children's fragile religious faith can be easily shattered if adults fail to instruct them properly or expect too much. Let's look at this in more detail.

Hughes is only twelve years old when his aunt brings them to the revival. His religious faith is not well-formed, and he gets the idea that he will actually see Jesus in some physical way when he is saved. His aunt has tried to explain salvation, but she does not do a very good job, for she neglects to mention that Jesus interacts with people in their hearts and souls and that the "light" she speaks of is not a physical light but a spiritual one.

Hughes simply does not understand, and he misinterprets his aunt's words. At the revival meeting, then, he sits with the other children, and he expects that Jesus will show Himself in some kind of light, that there will be one moment when Hughes will know that Jesus is there. Then Hughes will know that he is saved.

This does not happen. Hughes waits and waits until only he and one other boy are on the bench, the other children having been saved and gone up to the altar. Still Jesus does not appear. Hughes is looking for the wrong signs. He is looking outwardly rather than inwardly. The other boy decides to pretend, leaving Hughes sitting by himself.

The adults then make much over Hughes, kneeling around him and praying and crying. The boy is extremely confused at all this attention and pressure, and eventually, he, too, decides to pretend. But by the time he gets home, Hughes has lost any faith he had in Jesus. His expectations have not been fulfilled because they have not been well-formed by the adults who had the responsibility of helping him.