Is the story of little Langston’s experience in the church told by an impartial narrator? Why or why not?

The narrator of Langston Hughes's short story "Salvation" is not impartial; instead, he is a partial narrator who, while separated from the boy who is experiencing the events in the story, recalls many years later the vivid, personal way the experience made him feel. The narrator reflects on what it was like to be a twelve-year-old who is expected to experience salvation but who understands little of the experience he is going through. For example, the narrator says of his own feigned experience of salvation, "So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved." The narrator relays what it is like to be twelve and experiencing the pressures of expecting to be saved without feeling the internal experience of it. Though the narrator has changed since he was twelve and now has a sense of distance and irony about his experience, he can still produce the sense of alienation and wanting to please others that motivated him to want to profess salvation. He is not impartial but instead provides a firsthand personal account of what the experience in church was like for him.