Langston Hughes 'Essay Salvation'

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Langston Hughes’ essay “Salvation” tries to tell his childhood experience where he loss of innocence and faith of his understanding that Jesus is not real. On the first three sentences, Hughes shows his maturity, but as the essay goes on, his writing represents a naïve young boy. After further reading of the essay, Hughes has effectively portrays his experience through his writing by developing a persona that could be seen from the length of the sentences, diction, and use of detail. Hughes seems to have written his essay where the sentences varied in lengths, but preferably using shorter sentences. It is clear that he intended to fascinate and place the reader in the same shoes as his, with the use of varying length sentences, as the reader…show more content…
It is most powerful when it seems to have reached our senses and affect us emotionally. When he describes “A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands”(par.4), we could simply picture and feel as if we were also there at that time. Hughes’ portrayal of the elders of the church exemplifies the stark contrast of the “young lambs” and the tenacious elders. With this contrast, the reader could picture and feel how he was surrounded by the elders and felt the pressure from them. That situation would make a young boy be pressured and frightened, and that was what really happened to Hughes. Consequently, we could manipulate our feelings through the details that were provided by the author. Besides, the details that Hughes uses help him to draw the picturesque to reader clearly. When he states “the hot, crowded church” (par.2), it clearly explains the feeling of warmness at the church. The concrete details and vivid description that Hughes uses, helps him to express his feelings to our imagination. In conclusion, the sentence length, diction, and use of detail that Hughes uses in his essay, create the persona that he sets, and successfully put the reader in the same situation as him as a young boy, thus giving us a better understanding of his
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