Zora Neale Hurston’s Sweat is a story about Delia Jones, a hard workingwoman who washes clothes for a living. It is evident from the very beginning that she suffers the abuse of her husband, Sykes, as he beats and even tries to kill her by scaring her to death. The story is about these two characters, symbolizing the battle between good and evil.
I liked the story and the realism of the characters. Even though I had trouble getting around the way the dialog was written, I was able to get around it by reading a summary/analysis from a different website. It definitely helped me have a better understanding of Hurston’s short story.
Good vs. Evil plays a huge role in Sweat, with Delia and Sykes embodying, respectively, Good and Evil. Delia’s sweat represents her hard work and her desire to do honest work. Even when her husband beats her down, and it looks like she’s on the hardest of times, she continues on and never shows signs of giving up. On the other hand, Sykes is a sinful and evil person. Sykes is an ungrateful person and doesn’t quite realize how great his wife really, and does this by sleeping around with a woman who doesn’t even compare to Delia. He practically keeps her around to be his own personal punching bag. What happens to him in the end is karma, and this is foreshadowed from the very beginning when he tries to scare his wife to death with a bullwhip. After all the Delia had been through, Good triumphed over Evil, but her act of leaving Sykes to die makes us wonder. Does that one thing make her just as bad as he was?
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