Peer Pressure In Langston Hughes 'Salvation'

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Peer pressure, by definition, is the influence from members of one’s peer group. At some point in a person’s life, they are pressured by their peers both positively and negatively. It helps us as people define who we are. It also shows how it can change a person’s mind from doing the right thing to doing the wrong thing. Langston Hughes’ “Salvation” shows how he was succumbed to peer pressure by his aunt and the congregation to be saved. Peer pressure is a very common theme that surrounds people around my age. It’s the main thing that pushes people to make their decisions. In the story, Langston’s aunt was one of the main people pushing him to get saved. If anybody has a strong effect on somebody it has to be a family member. They have such an effect on a person simply because you trust your family members a lot more than you would a stranger. I assume that his aunt was his caretaker considering she was telling him about the children’s meetings days before. That alone had to have him thinking that he just had to get saved or it would be a never ending thing. I would be the same way if someone in my family or close to me…show more content…
It’s like fashion, when I see a lot of people wearing a certain kind of shoes, I’m likely to go and get those shoes to join the crowd. This goes along with the pressure from the congregation. Though it seems that he wasn’t too much affected by them, they played a role in him lying too. They surrounded him by praying, yelling, and crying. He also said himself that he didn’t want to hold up everybody just because he didn’t see Jesus. I can relate to that because in church they have this thing called altar call, it’s when the preacher calls people to the altar to be prayed for. Most of the younger people stay in their seats, but when I saw more and more people go up there I decided to go too. I didn’t go because I wanted to be prayed for I simply went because everyone else

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