At the time when “Sweat” was published African American writers were struggling in getting their writing published. Zora Neale Hurston’s cleaver use of African American folk speech was a unique style. “Sweat”, one of Hurston’s work, explored many themes of religion, marriage, and feminism which most can be found through symbolism.
The story follows Delia, who symbolizes Southern African American woman in the early 20th century, a wife in a loveless marriage subjected to abuse from her husband Sykes. Delia Jones’ life is full of cruelty, where she is faced with cleaning, physical exhaustion, abuse, unfaithfulness, and sweat. Church was the only place where she could take a break from her suffering. In Sykes attempt to get rid of Delia he leaves a snake in the house. Later, the snake escapes and roams through the house, Delia left the house. Sykes was roaming the house when suddenly was bitten by the snake causing him to die.
Hurston often uses her own experiences when she does her writings. Hurston uses black folk tradition in which she learned from her hometown in Eatonville, Florida. Hurston’s father was a Baptist preacher, which may be a reason as to why Religion was a big theme in the story. In the story Delia yells at Sykes saying, “Ah hates you tuh de same degree dat Ah useter love yuh. Ah done took an’ took til mah belly is full up tuhmah neck. Dat’s de reason Ah got mah letter fum de church an’ moved mah membership tuh Woodbridge—so Ah don’t haf tuh take no sacrament wid yuh.” (7, Hurston). Church was something Delia looks forward to because it was her time away from her abusive husband. The short story “Sweat” could also symbolizes a test of faith, throughout the story Delia kept her faith in God, she went to church every Sunday and she prayed. Sykes on the other hand abuses Delia and have affairs which are sins. At the end of the story, Delia’s praying brought her to a better place while Sykes’ sins had caught up to him in the end. Another way for the story to symbolizes religion was the story setting. A woman and a man and “a house and garden whose equilibrium is shattered by the arrival of a snake” (605, Carter). “Sweat” sounds like the story of Adam and Eve, where a snake (the devil in
The short story “Sweat,” by Zora Neale Hurston, seems to exemplify the epitome of a bad marriage. Hurston uses foreshadowing and irony to demonstrate the disintegrated relationship between the abusive husband and the diligent wife. Throughout the story, it becomes obvious that the husband does not oblige by the motto, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Hurston’s use of irony and foreshadowing helps reveal the fact that “the good will prevail” and Sykes will finally get what he deserves.
Knowing Zora Neale Hurston was a religious woman, it is no shock that throughout the “Sweat” there are many hidden Biblical references. One reference the story often makes is the snake. The snake is a reference to many things. It first, is a reference to the snake in the book of Genesis, where the devil tempts Eve. The snake also represents original sin and the darkness that comes in all of humanity. In “Sweat”, Delia is afraid of the snake, thus showing her fear of sin and darkness, portraying her as a strong Christian character. The snake can also be a connection to Christ. When the snake is first brought to the house it appears dead. It remains this way for three days, until it miraculously awakens (Carter 611). This relates to Christ when he is hung on the cross and buried. He
The Harlem Renaissance marked the coming out of many brilliant black authors and thinkers. Names like Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alain Locke, Ralph Waldo Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston marked the scene. Hurton portrays many messages in her stories without having to explicitly spell it out. This among other reasons make Hurston's writing so rich. Two of her almost fable-like stories, "Sweat" and "The Gilded Six-Bits", each portray powerful messages individually. In "Sweat," you get a message of "whatever goes over the Devil's back, is got to come under his belly." You will reap what you sow among other messages. In "The Gilded Six-Bits," you learn that time will heal, money is the root of all evil, and other morals. These
As she lies on her bed, Delia gains a moment of comfort, and a getaway from her great disdain. She is able to create a spiritual barrier from the mistreatments she receives from her unscrupulous husband. The bed is her Eden, her only resource for relaxation and a content being. Even the hamper in the bedroom is the only group of clothing that is considered neat and tidy, representing the cleanliness of the room. Everywhere else in the house, Sykes would step on and trample over the clothing Delia had to clean. He had no respect for his wife and her work. The bedroom used to be the only place that hadn’t been defiled by Sykes, until he slept with Bertha in it. Knowing of this travesty brings Delia over the edge.
The main character in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” is a black woman who resides in the South that clutches on to her belief in God to help her get through the suffering that she endures from her abusive and adulterous husband, Sykes. “Sweat” is full of religious symbolism that demonstrates that Hurston was using the theme of good vs. evil in the short story.
Zora Neale Hurston’s short story "Sweat" takes place in the 1920s in a small African American community in southern Florida. The story takes a look at a woman dominated by her husband, a common issue for many wives in the south during this time. Delia Jones, the protagonist in the story, is a hard-working woman who has bought her own home and supported her husband for fifteen years by taking in the laundry of white folks from the next town over. Delia’s husband Sykes does not value her or the work she does to support the both of them. Sykes has abused his wife for fifteen years and takes no shame in parading around his fat mistress for all to see. Sykes wants to get rid of Delia and take everything she’s ever worked for. Delia, though
I want to focus on the story ‘Sweat’ because it happened to be my favorite from the selected female authors we read this semester. I was very struck by the story because Hurston wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, and represents women even in a male-dominated culture. The story ‘Sweat’ takes place in a rural setting. Hurston tends to focus on relationships and conflicts in her writing. In this story, Delia is a hardworking woman. She is also strong, despite being in an abusive relationship. Her husband is portrayed as rude, and clearly doesn’t appreciate anything she does. The narrator also tells the reader how young and beautiful Delia used to look before her abusive marriage. The husband in the story is upset and mad at white people. However, Delia has to work so she defends herself and her job. The story ends with a snake bite that kills her husband. However, he was the one who brought it in the house to scare and more than likely kill Delia. I believe that Hurston’s intentions were to represent a strong female woman who held no regards for a man who mistreated her. I also believe that her intended audience was for females in general. By making Delia hardworking and strong, she is a woman who represents female empowerment. By doing so, Hurston makes women more aware that they don’t have to be consumed in a male-dominated culture, but that a woman can do as she pleases, and not have to
Not only does he drain her financially, but he has also abused her mentally and emotionally for the most of their marriage. Delia reminds Sykes that all she does is "Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and Sweat, cry and sweat, pray and sweat!" from the fifteen years she has been washing laundry and laments (Hurston 278). However, despite all the cruelty that is happening, the author still portrays her persona with great compassion. Delia has enormous love, but soon discovers that she has the capacity to hate as much as she loves which has developed from her long-suffering life with Sykes. The author creates Delia based off her own life of being a Christian woman, therefore, in the story "Sykes is clearly wrong throughout the story, and Delia is right in living out the principles of Christian love, tolerance, and humility" (Banks). The importance of this quote is that it puts Delia's character into perspective and reveals why the way she is. The author's beliefs and practices are demonstrated through Delia and explain her actions in the story.
Delia was physically abused many times by her husband, Sykes. He was also mentally and verbally abusive to her by calling her names and constantly teasing her. This can be seen when he pretends to scare Delia with a snake, and then calls her names for being scared. In Zora’s life, this is seen where she also grew up as an abused child from her father. Her father did not like her very much because her sassy attitude. He said that she “was too spirited and too mouthy for her own good” which hurt her feelings and made her very aware that she was not his favorite child in the family (Boyd 27). Her father would also physically abuse her by threatening and spanking her as a child. In the story, Sykes represents Zora’s father because they were both abusive towards women. Zora included this detail in her story to explain her life as a child. The story is put in the perspective of a grown woman who had been abused, but how she would feel the same pain a child would feel who had been abused. No matter the person’s age, anyone
Zora Neale Hurston is a remarkable author who reflects her life in most of her novels, short stories, and her essays. She was a writer during the Harlem Renaissance, also known as “the new negro movement”, however; her writings were not given proper recognition at first because they were not of the “norm” for that time period. All of the authors during the Harlem Renaissance were expected to write about race with a political mind set. Hurston was tired of seeing the same writings just different authors so her literary works were very different and were meant to stand out (Trudell). Among all of her abstracts, Sweat was a story of determination and oppression, with religion and strength as the backbone of
Through external conflict exhibited by three significant occasions with the antagonist and husband, Sykes Jones, Zora Neale Hurston takes her leading character, Delia Jones, through an internal change from a submissive character to an aggressive and defensive character in her short story, "Sweat." When the story opens, one finds Delia Jones on a Sunday evening washing clothes, as was her profession, and humming a tune, wondering where her husband had gone with her horse and carriage. Little did she know that within the week she would stand against her abusive husband and watch him die of the situation he would create.
Modernism is a literary style of American literature that begins in the 1920s and was ongoing until World War II. World War I, industrialization, The Great Depression, and World War II influenced many authors. These authors exemplify disillusion, loss of faith, loss of hope, and feeling of futility within their works. Hurston’s literary work, “Sweat”, a story of a black woman and her abusive husband describes Delia’s struggles against society, and the little power she has against her husband Sykes. Searching for comfort and happiness is a main focal point of Modernism within this story. Sykes does this and tries to be a snake by his evil qualities, physical abuse, and being unexpected like a rattler.
In both Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the focus is on women who want better lives but face difficult struggles before gaining them. The difficulties involving men which Janie and Delia incur result from or are exacerbated by the intersection of their class, race, and gender, which restrict each woman for a large part of her life from gaining her independence.
In the story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston she talks about a lady that is independent. This lady’s name is Delia. She is married to Sykes who does abuse her and has a mistress named Bertha who he is trying to get her into Delia’s house. Delia is the one that does all the hard work while Sykes just sits at home. The symbols in this story help get the theme across which are domestic violence and empowerment. The three main symbols in this story each stand for a theme which is the snake portraying domestic violence, the Chinaberry tree and the title “Sweat” both portray empowerment.
The symbolism that is apparent in this story is the snake. Delia is terrified of snakes and her husband Sykes loves to tease her about her fear of snakes (Hurston, 1926). In the beginning of the story, while Delia is sorting clothes Sykes throws his big bull whip on her and she is terrified until she notices what it is (Hurston, 1926). Irony is shown in the story because even though Sykes brings the rattlesnake home to scare Delia off, it ends up killing him in the end (Hurston, 1926). The reader can also see the literary element of figurative language being used when Delia gets fed up with Sykes having the rattlesnake at their house and she begins to let him know how fed up she is of him: “Yo’ ole black hide don’t look lak nothin’ tuh me, but uh passle uh wrinkled up rubber, wid yo’ big ole yeahs flappin’ on each side lak uh paih uh buzzard wings (Hurston, 1926, para.49). Although the above example may be hard to read, it is a great example of similes being used in this short story.