In the narration “Salvation”, Langston Hughes experiences an epiphany that changes him. In the beginning, he believed in the possibility of God, and hoped to get saved during the big revival at his aunt’s church. He expected to see a light when he received salvation (Sharpe). However, by the end of the narration, Hughes no longer believes in Jesus. He gets disillusioned because he waited for Christ until he could no longer wait, yet nothing happened. On the night of the revival, Hughes cries in bed because he did not experience salvation as he had expected and hoped he would at the beginning of the story. The epiphany leads Hughes to question the existence of God.
In addition to the spiritual epiphany, the narrator also realizes that adults do not always know everything. At the beginning of the narration, Hughes believed in the idea of salvation because he had heard his aunt and many other old people speak about it. He trusted that he would experience the coming of Jesus exactly as the adults had narrated. By the end of the day, he realized that adults were not always right. For instance, when his aunt heard him crying, she thought it was because he had received the Holy Spirit. The young narrator became aware of his capacity to lie to people around him just as he had deceived the people in church.
Work Cited
Sharpe, Matthew. “On “Salvation” by Langston Hughes.” The Center for Fiction, Web.