Salvation By Chris Abani Analysis

The Essays “Salvation” by Langston Hughes and “The Lottery” by Chris Abani maintain correlations regarding main ideas. In “Salvation,” Hughes retains the belief that a community enacts pressure onto its youths to comply with its customs in order to maintain orthodoxy in its society. Hughes shares his personal experience at a revival where twelve year old Hughes was pressured by his congregation to be “brought to Jesus.” Similar to Hughes, in “The Lottery,” Abani asserts that society is forcibly trying to control the mindset of its young; when Abani was a child, he was forced to learn and watch the crude consequences of breaking the law in his community. Abani states that as the accused criminal was being prosecuted, someone called out, therefore, …show more content…
Both authors used lucid descriptions to portray the events and situations in their essays. Abani depict lively imagery in “The Lottery,” such as engaging our sense of smell with by describing that In “Under Water,” Fadiman also portray vivid imagery, for example, by describing the strength of the “higher and swifter” Green River. The authors further show their eloquence by brilliantly utilizing figurative language in their essays. In “The Lottery,” Abani applies irony:. The quote ironically compares the people’s actions of spitting a person they burned by orderly filing a line similar to a church religious service. Fadiman practiced personification in her essay, in which she saw. Fadiman describes the wave of the river as a person who bends, stretches, and drowns Gary. The authors provide distinct reactions towards the tragedy they witness in their essays. Abani, a young boy, was horrified at the scene of the persecution of the alleged thief, where the people in his community set the man ablaze while spitting on the “incandescent figure.” He felt empathy to the victim of the mob as he covering his nose. In “Under Water,” Fadiman felt untroubled as she initially assumed that she and her pack could save her drowning friend, but even after she realized that her friend could not be saved she seemed unruffled: . The reactions were distinct between the two authors as …show more content…
Their errors and views as implied in the essays are varied. The authors’ mistakes in the essays are excusable as they developed a heavy amount of regret in their later years, which we can infer from their tone in their narratives. In “Salvation”, Langston Hughes was put into a mental fight between what he feels right and what ought to be right when he attended a revival to be saved by Jesus. At that time he still lacked maturity to interpret that what the elders meant by “seeing Jesus” was an emotional encounter and not a literal one. He then felt he deceived everyone when claimed to be saved. In adulthood, Hughes wrote this excerpt to explain his misconceptions and regrets as a child, correcting his mistakes. In “The Lottery,” Chris Abani suggests that he could have acted in a way which would help the victim of the arbitrary persecution of the crowd. As a child at the time, he didn’t know what to think as the mob burned an alleged criminal. However, after reaching adulthood and recalled the event in his essay, he believed that he could have helped the victim and regretted his passiveness in the past. Furthermore, he explained his understanding by relating the event with the newspapers editorials he had read, which described that victims of received no trials and. Although Abani could have acted differently, it wouldn’t have changed the fate of the victim as Abani was still a child amongst a crowd of