A Comparison Of The Narratives In Salvation By Langston Hughes And Me Talk Pretty One Day

Langston Hughes’ “Salvation,” features a young boy in a church whose elders want all its young members to be saved during revival. In “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, an older man travels to France in search of French lessons. Both stories have characters wanting the narrator’s help but they don’t get it.

In paragraphs 5 and 6, the boy is still not going down to be saved, and he just sits with his friend. One example is the terrible demeanor displayed by the teacher on page 333, where he tells the narrator that he hates him. Or, on page 344, where she stabs one of her students in the eye with the pencil. The narrator feels belittled and that he doesn’t understand the situation as illustrated on pages 343-344. The Sedaris article has a different conflict. The boy wants Jesus in person and not to rely on others. Hughes makes this clear in the fifth para. Fortunately, the conflict leads to something: the boy is saved. A second conflict is the Sedaris article. The Sedaris narrative shows how the narrator eventually understands the teacher’s message and is then able to answer her questions. This implies that someone may be able not only to understand but also speak a language and should never stop learning. Hughes wrote that while a problem can seem temporary, it can come back later, causing stress. Both narratives have well-written conflicts that show how people can overcome obstacles by not following the instructions of their environment.