I think that Hughes decided to write “Salvation” 20 years after it happened was because he didn’t want others to know that he didn’t actually accept God on that day. We don’t know anything after the story, but my bet is he continued to live in his lie and continued to go to church with his aunt like he had actually accepted Him. His aunt taking him to church on that day played a major impact on his life, but I don’t think that he could be mad at his aunt for doing it. I think that by going, he was able to accept himself as not being like the others. He didn’t accept God, he never felt Him coming inside of him. Everyone there wanted him to accept Him, so he gave in just so that they would stop fussing over him. He had no reason to be mad, they weren’t going to stop until he went up on stage. So he did the only logical thing he could think of and went up. They all cheered and that was that, he was accepted and the hoopla stopped. He wasn’t happy, but everyone else was. “Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air. My aunt threw her arms around me. The minister took me by the hand and led to the platform…That night, for the last time in my life…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 and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was actually crying because I couldn’t bare to tell her I had lied, that I had decieved everyone in the church, that I hadn’t seen Jesus…”