Salvation is Hughes heart-wrenching account of finding God. or in Hughes case not finding Him. In Salvation, there are two types of conflict happening, Man vs. society and Man vs. himself. Hughes desires to find Jesus for himself, but he also feels a literal pressure to find him by his Auntie and those in his community who have "found" him. Hughes found himself on the Mourners bench alone after all of the other children had went over to the preacher and found Jesus. Hughes felt obligated to go to the other side because the entire congregation was waiting on him to do so.
"Now it was getting really late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn't seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.
So I got up."
During this Man vs. society conflict, Hughes does a phenomenal job showing the readers the pressure he was under using internal thought. He also does it, by using dialogue rarely. The dialogue that is used holds more of a punch because there is so little of it. The words chosen then are significant, because they made it to the paper. Hearing the preacher and the entire congregation praying for you and asking you to come over to Jesus. Having your Auntie crying to you in front of the congregation is, in my humble opinion, extreme pressure. I am amazed he held out as long as he did.
The conflict of Man vs. himself coincides beautifully with the Man vs. society. The reason Hughes is not giving into the pressure is because he wants to really know for himself that God and Jesus are real and there for him. He accepts Jesus for the congregations sake, but cries to himself that night because he had lost all faith and belief. It is a very poignant moment.
"That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old--I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn't stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle that I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. 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, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe that there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me."
That concluding paragraph of the essay is the conclusion of the Man vs. himself conflict. He illustrates that tragic moment of despair with imagery and self-reflection/interior thought.
Salvation is a very action packed essay. It is filled to the brim with imagery and interior thought which push the action forward. The dialogue is the cherry on top that seals the dramatic scene in our hearts and our mind forever. It is what makes this essay stand out. Because it was such a small essay, every comma, every word, every piece of dialogue was specifically chosen. It seems like such a simple essay, but it wasn't. Hughes was on top of his craft game when writing about the depths of his despair.
Brilliant!
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