Throughout my life, I believed and doubted what people told me. Finding the truth was difficult and labyrinthine. Comparable to “Salvation” and “Allegory of the Cave”, I experienced disillusion, enlightenment, and self-mastery.
Langston Hughes’s “Salvation” deals with themes of disillusion. In his story, he mentions what other people told him regarding his baptizing. They led Hughes to believe that when he was, “saved” he would, “see a light” and something would happen to him, “inside” (5). He was also told that he would be able to, “see and hear and feel Jesus” in his soul (5). Just as he waited for Jesus to go to him in a more than spiritual way, I also waited for adventure to happen in my life in epic ways. Hughes stated, “I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long” (6). This mirrored how I began to think of myself in middle school. I expected so much out of life. When I was exposed to nothing but bland experiences, I thought I was flawed and broken.…show more content… I draw several similarities between myself and to the prisoner who was set free. “To them” Plato writes, regarding the prisoners, “the truth would be nothing but the shadows of the images [on the wall]” (386). In my case, my expectations of my future are the false truths shown to me on my cave wall. The rough ascent reflects my own journey of disillusionment. The beginning of my journey and the middle were not the most important aspects of my story. The most important event was seeing the outside world lit by the sun. Just as the prisoner realized the outside world was “in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold” so did I realize I can make my life epic (388). I realized that to ensure a life of adventure, I only need to take chances and concoct adventures of my
