Langston Hughes' short story "Big Meeting" introduces the narrator and his friend Bud, two teenage African American boys observing a forest church revival from the road nearby. The revival is also viewed from afar by groups of jeering white people, who the protagonist eventually learns, to his disdain, he is not so unlike in his disrespect.
The protagonist and Bud do not attend the revivals to listen to the sermons, sing, or pray. Instead, they stay "outside in the road where [they] could smoke and laugh like the white folks", claiming they are too "young and wild" to join in with their mothers, who are actively involved (33). He and Bud always leave before the sinners are called to the mourners' bench, as they are "having too good a time being sinners" (33). Much like the protagonist and Bud, "whites liked to come and sit outside in the road... smoking and listening, enjoying themselves... in a not very serious way" (33). Despite the similarities between the protagonist and the whites' reaction to the Big Meeting, the protagonist regards them with contempt, quickly growing irritated at their mocking laughter and taunts. The protagonists' anger reaches its peak when a white woman laughs at his mother as she dances to the chorus - according to him, "nobody had any business laughing at her, least of all white people" (35). Initially in denial of his own insolence, the protagonist realizes that his disgust at the whites' reactions is hypocritical, for he also "made fun of the shouters, laughing at [his] parents as though they were crazy" (35). |
As the Big Meeting reaches its climax and the sinners prepare to be called to the mourners' bench, the moment when the protagonist and Bud would normally take their leave, the mocking white people drive away "in a swirl of dust" (37). Unaware that the situation has brought him to tears, the protagonist begs them not to leave. He has realized his own mistakes, and that he, too, was afflicted with prejudice - the protagonist is ready to be saved. Seeing himself in the white people, he hopes for them to be saved as well.
Forced to face his own denial and hypocrisy, the protagonist reaches epiphany at the end of "Big Meeting". While the story ends just before the sinners are prayed for, the protagonist will, presumably, stay for the first time, and ask for forgiveness. |