What Is Langston Hughes Tone In Salvation

In the short story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, Hughes is writing a memoir about his negative experience with the Christian church as a child. Hughes’ memoir is a recount of visiting his aunt’s church while the members of the Congregation try to help convert the young children into believers of Jesus Christ. Hughes never directly criticizes the church, or religion, or even the members of the church, but his tone indicates that his memoir is criticizing the Christian community, and himself.
The first two sentences of Hughes’ memoir, “I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved”, set the whole tone for Hughes’ criticism for how people are supposedly saved by Jesus in the Christian community. The audience gets the warning, from those two sentences alone, that Hughes was only a believer in Jesus Christ and a Christian for …show more content…
Hughes was waiting and waiting for the events his aunt described to happen to him, “…I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting- but he didn’t come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me but nothing happened” and so the young boy, who felt he had taken up to much as everyone’s time; So he decided to do what Westley had done, he got up and “suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they saw [him] rise.” Hughes ends his memoir by saying “That night, for the last time in my life but one- for I was a big boy of twelve years old- I cried.” He explains his aunt found him crying and told her husband it was because Hughes had found Jesus Christ but Hughes writes “but I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church.” Hughes was upset at himself for lying, even if it was to members of a congregation who lied to him how Jesus would save him by coming to