Introduction
The Harlem Renaissance, a period spanning roughly the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, is frequently referred to as a literary movement, but the movement also encompassed a great explosion of African-American expression in many venues that celebrated the unique heritage, art forms, sights and sounds that were the African-American experience. One of the literary artists that gained the most recognition during this period was Langston Hughes. Hughes came into his professional years just as the Harlem Renaissance was becoming recognized on a more national scale and had the courage to both take inspiration from and yet disagree with his mentors such as W.E.B. DuBois by writing about the positive and negative aspects of black life. One of these experiences is included in his essay “Salvation,” in which he talks about an experience he had as a 13 year old boy in the kind of church revivals that were at the center of African American social life.
Main Body
There are several clues within the essay that it was written from the reminiscent perspective of an older man rather than the more immediate perspective of the boy he was including his choice of words, his more developed understanding of human nature shown through his sarcasm and his greater understanding of his own reactions.
Hughes includes several clues throughout his essay that he is writing a memory by the words that he uses. He starts his essay by stating that “I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen … It happened like this.” This is clearly a sign that what is about to be discussed is a memory and not something that has just happened. He talks about how he was ‘escorted’ to the front row and how the preacher preached a “wonderful rhythmic sermon,” words and phrases that do not seem completely comfortable within the mouth of a young teenager unsure of what is going on or hurriedly attempting to capture his confused feelings on paper. As the church celebrates his ‘salvation’, Hughes describes the “hushed silence, punctuated by a few ecstatic ‘amens’.” Here again is the voice of an older man with a greater vocabulary and the leisure to carefully chose the words he wants to use instead of the confused 13-year-old still stinging from his experience.
Hughes also demonstrates that he has a much higher understanding of human nature in his descriptions of the people of the church and his slight addition of sarcasm within the essay. Describing his own anticipation of the event, Hughes describes how his belief in the concept that Jesus would come to him was fostered by the descriptions his aunt and others had given to him, indicating his natural childlike inclination to believe what his elders said. His description of the minister’s sermon, though, “all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell,” carries a hint of sarcasm as he points out the now obvious way in which the minister and the rest of the church manipulated the children into pretending they ‘saw’ Jesus at the revival. As he describes the way in which his aunt reacted at the church, seeing that her nephew was the only child left who was not called to Jesus, he seems to understand more why that kind of pressure worked on him and how it reflected back on her, both that he was slow to ‘see’ Jesus and that he was willing to do whatever he was supposed to do in order to save her from embarrassment. His description of the hysteric behavior of the church members, praying, singing and making a fuss over him as they did, hints at a touch of anger that they would put so much pressure on a little boy.
Finally, the essay demonstrates that Hughes has a much stronger understanding of himself and his own reactions throughout this experience. He describes how he felt ashamed at holding everything up and keeping all the people there so late. Although he seemed to have realized, even at 13, that God would not strike him down because he lied in church, this is a realization that he seems to have long ago accepted rather than just now accepted. The depth of his feeling at that time, that caused him to cry the only other time he had cried in his (semi-) adult life, would not come out on paper in such a thoughtful, coherent format as expressed in this essay. Hughes also understands the reason why he was crying so deeply, “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.” In the way that he has written the essay, Hughes no longer seems contrite and sorrowful about lying, but perhaps a little angry that the church members made him feel this way.
Conclusion
Although there is nothing in the essay that suggests it couldn’t possibly have been written by a 13-year-old Langston Hughes; it is much more likely that he wrote the essay at a much older and more mature age. There are numerous hints throughout the essay, such as in his sophisticated word choice, his subtle understanding of human nature and his own understanding of his earlier reaction. If this essay had been written at the time that Hughes had this experience, the essay would have been much more emotional and less organized.
Works Cited
Hughes, Langston. “Salvation.”