Filed under: Passport/Intro to Religion
Hughes wrote Salvation so long after the experience because he felt like he wasn’t ready to tell about it. It was a big moment in his life that he kept secret from the world for so long. His family members cared very deeply about him seeing Jesus and if he didn’t actually see him, Hughes might have greatly upset his family. The weirdest part of this story is, the adults never had seen Jesus so how would the kids see him, and why did the adults care so much? Hughes feels really awful about the whole thing at first and is even driven to not believe in Jesus anymore. This was obviously a big day for him. This narrative was more to explain the distance between generations than it was to criticize anybody. His aunt and the other adults were brought up that way and for whatever reason they thought that all those kids had seen Jesus. Every generation is different and it shows in this narrative. The other kids had definitely not seen Jesus and the round kid Westley even told Hughes to just get up because he was “tired of sitting there.” The generation before him would not have done that. They would have waited until they saw Jesus and not gotten up because they were tired. However, Hughes’s people would just get up because they wanted to get it over with and fool all the adults. In conclusion, the difference in generations is the main idea of the story.