Sweat By Hurston Zora Analysis

In the short story “Drenched in Light” by Zora Neale Hurston, the author appeals to a broad audience by disguising ethnology and an underlying theme of gender, race, and oppression with an ambiguous tale of a young black girl and the appreciation she receives from white people. Often writing to a double audience, Hurston had a keen ability to appeal to white and black readers in a clever way. “[Hurston] knew her white folks well and performed her minstrel shows tongue in cheek” (Meisenhelder 2). Originally published in The Opportunity in 1924, “Drenched in Light” was Hurston’s first story to a national audience.

Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” presents the efforts and endurance of a very strong miserable wife, over the course of fifteen years of marriage with an abusive, disloyal, and odious husband. As the narrator tells us, Delia is a wash woman who pays for all of their expenses by washing white people’s clothes. And even though she is a very strong woman, but like most people, she also has a fear of something, and that fear is the snake. During the course of this story, Delia’s fear is abusively manipulated by her husband, Sykes, to purposely drive her out of her house. But his plan “returns to haunt him” and backfires. In fact, this is the combination of an irony and main purpose of the story: you will eventually

“Sweat” by Zora Neal Hurston is one simple yet powerful story that aims to reveal the plight of women through Delia. Delia turns out to be an empowered woman who has built her own home, handles her family’s finances, works hard, and takes pleasure in the results of her hard work. The fascinating fact about Delia whom I believe represents women in general, is that she was able to establish and maintain a home despite being married to an inconsiderate husband who only brought a longing for the flesh instead of love into the relationship (699).

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

Religious faith has always acted as a saving grace for those in need ranging from the time of slavery, in which slaves adopted religious doctrines to endure the hopeless life of harsh plantation conditions. To the case of the protagonist, Delia Jones in Zora Hurston's piece, "Sweat". Throughout the short story, Delia is tormented by her unfaithful husband Sykes who physically and verbally abuses her. Although she is subjected to this kind of ridicule daily she is able to cope with her faith and modest work style.

Upon the completion of Zora Neale Hurston’s short story, Sweat, a number of literary devices and elements of fiction were identified throughout the reading. Hurston is able to combine the elements of Freytag’s pyramid, while also utilizing literary devices, such as imagery, to create a fictional work of art. The short story, Sweat, unfolds with the exposition of Freytag’s Pyramid. It depicts the life of Delia Jones, a sedulous washwoman living in Florida with her sadistic husband during the 1920’s.

Her husband, Sykes, is ultimately verbally and physically abusive. He constantly beats her, resulting in her body to deteriorate from living in such a cruel environment. Her overpowering “lover” restricts her from enjoying life, but unfortunately that pain is all she knows. Why does she remain with Sykes when she can be free? The constant manipulation she faces triggers fear, so she does not leave him.

“But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem”(Zora Neale Hurston). Hurston is arguing that there are more issues than black or white. There is also sexism, classism and there is more than one inequity. Minorities need to look at the problem as a whole and address more than just the race problem. (transition) A diseased language model uses words to oppress others, and are born out of fear. A model is diseased because it will deliver sickness and death. Cixous identified language models and said that they are the bane of our existence. She said they were introduced to us young and limited us from moving fluidly through our lives. By using these types

Hurston found herself heavily ridiculed for her methods of writing “Sweat” because people claimed that she was writing in a way that brought African Americans down to fit into standard racial stereotypes instead of bringing them up to be equals with whites. In reality, “Sweat” conveys the true lives of many African American women of the 1900’s but this is more of a feminist story than a racial story through the empowerment of Delia by having a strong economic power over Sykes. She built her home “for her old days” and she poured her sweat and work into it. Even the people in the town recognized that she was a hard worker and deserved more than what Sykes was giving her. The town folks reveal that she used to be a beautiful woman but Sykes had

Zora Neale Hurston’s revolutionary short story “Sweat” looks into the life of Delia Jones, a washwoman, and her unfaithful husband, Sykes. Hurston grew up in an age of progression, where women and African Americans were both gaining more rights. Hurston was a vocal and bold advocate of women’s rights in the 1920’s; She wrote many short stories in during her time in the group The Harlem Renaissance trying to bring to light the conditions women were putting themselves in for the sake of marriage. Through Delia’s life, Hurston talks about an unhappy marriage that boils over the pot. Hurston’s language helps the reader understand the oppression that women such

“Everybody's good when they're good, darling. You don't judge a person by that. It's how they act when things aren't good that tells you who they really are.” ― Megan Jacobson (Goodreads, “56 Quotes”) Much like the world around us, literature has many elements that have the reader portray their own understanding and perspective of it. In Sweat, Zora Neale Hurston gives the reader many different situations where many readers can have several viewpoints. This seems to be very similar to the Bible, where a child of God can read the same scripture as another and have a completely different meaning in their eyes. Zora Hurston uses many elements that focus on the idea that actions one does speak louder than words, by the use of religious imagery and Delia, the wife.

Zora Neale Hurston was able to offer a feminine opinion in a time when writing was primarily dominated by males. This evidently demonstrated a difference in her work in comparison to her male counterparts. For instance, During this time writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes were analogous to black activist and spoke up for their race, discussing inequality and examining the negative issues at play while offering strategies to combat those issues and bring about change. For instance, Dubois spoke greatly about black upliftment through the process of higher education and urged blacks to stand up for what they believed and not conform to passiveness. This is depicted when Dubois states “the way for a people to gain their reasonable

Symbolism is often utilized in literary pieces to help express an idea and reveal a deeper meaning. In Zora Neale Hurston's short story "Sweat," the main character, Delia, is a victim that suffers from her husband Sykes' cruelty and abuse. The symbols of clothing, sweat and snakes play a major role in "Sweat" and reveal hidden meanings (the truth) about the two characters Delia and Sykes.

In her short story “Sweat”, Zora Hurston uses plot to expose the theme that what goes around comes around. Plot is an author’s careful arrangement of incidents in a narrative in order to achieve a desired effect. In Hurston’s case, the desired effect is shaping the theme of the story. Throughout “Sweat”, all of the events are carefully thought out in order to show the reader that Sykes got what he deserved, therefore creating the theme what goes around comes around. The main highlighted events in this plot are the verbal conflict that Delia and Sykes have, the town scene where Sykes is being discussed by local townspeople, Sykes bringing home a rattlesnake, and Sykes getting bit by the snake.

The point of view a story is told in has a significant impact on how the reader perceives the story, the plot, and the characters. “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, 1978, and “Pigeons at Daybreak” by Anita Desai, 1926, are both narrated in third person limited omniscient. Although both stories are narrated from the same point of view and both follow the protagonist of the story, the stories portray the main characters as complete opposites. While Delia, the protagonist in “Sweat”, invokes empathy from the reader, she ultimately is strong and independent. Mr. Basu, the protagonist in “Pigeons at Daybreak”, invokes frustration and pity from the reader as he is begging for sympathy from his wife.