Sweat (2)

After our class discussion last week in Women’s Literature, I realized how much I actually enjoyed the short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston. Not that I did not enjoy it the first time I read it, but while going through and discussing different things about the story, it brought many things to my attention that I found quite interesting.

Sweat was not easy to read. The language was difficult because it was written as one might really talk in the Deep South a long time ago. For example instead of writing “I don’t care if you ever finish”, the narrator would write “Ah don’t keer if you never git through.” I often found myself reading it aloud to figure out what the characters were saying. But apart from the hard to read dialect, Sweat was full of really interesting spiritual references and also the concept of “karma”. 

The main feminine character, Delia, is not your average woman. She is strong and straightforward. I think that no one would want to be in the situation that she is in, but because of how strong she was and the way she reacts to her situation makes her admirable. Her husband physically and mentally abuses her soon after their marriage for 15 years, and it never stops. But even though sometimes she takes the beatings, she never gives up. I know for a fact that if I were in that position, I would have hit the ground running after the first beating. But she knew that her husband would get what he deserves. She even said after her husband and her had had a fight that, “Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing.” And until this day would come she would stand firm, and because she did so, she is rewarded and he is punished at the end of the story.

Another thing that I found very intriguing about this story was the many references to parts in the bible. Growing up in a Christian home, I picked up on these references quite quickly. Religion seems to be a big part of this short story. Going to church on Sundays and sacrament are mentioned countless times. Her husband even gets angry with her for cleaning when she mentions she had just “taken sacrament at the church house” but had come home and returned working. He even calls a hypocrite for doing so. This is because Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. But what really caught my attention was the description in the last paragraph of the story.

“She could scarcely reach the Cinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish the eye which must know by now that she knew.”

This reference to a river rising is suppose to illustrate justice. The Nile River in the bible represents purity and this is the river of purity “extinguishing” the eye (her husband). I just thought this was such a great way to describe her husband getting what he deserved. Anyone could have just said that her husband died because he did her wrong. Another obvious biblical reference is the issue of the snake. Serpents in the bible represent the devil, and when he brings the snake to the house, the snake ends up being what kills him.

I think that Sweat just goes to show all of us that what goes around comes around. ;)