Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston - Literature review Example

Argumentative and Persuasive The literature is about a woman called Delia married to a man called Sykes. They live in an unhappy marriage where Sykes does nothing but abuse Delia both physically and emotionally. Delia does her best to provide for the both of them by washing for the whites, but Sykes does not approve of anything she does (Hurston 3). Instead, he wastes all that she sweats for and wastes all he has on another woman, Bertha whom he deems fitter than his own wife Delia. Sykes plays ugly pranks on Delia with the hope of scaring her away from the house. This is so that he can bring in his mistress whom he has promised a house. One of the awful pranks on his wife eventually leads to his demise. The same snake that he brings to the house to scare off Delia brings him to his grave. Delia is not responsible for Sykes death. He is responsible for his own death because the snake that kills him is not a stray snake from the bushes, but one that he carried himself into the house. Delia’s action to watch Sykes die and do nothing about it has nothing to do with her morality, but the fear that grips her at the thought of the snake (Kennedy and Gioa 38). Delia is a good Christian woman who has to put up with an evil husband Sykes. Sykes dies as a result of his devilish ways. Delia restrains herself from succumbing to Sykes teasing and hatred by referring to how she has just come from eating the sacrament. “I do not want any fuss tonight Sykes. I have just taken the sacrament at the church house"(Hurston and Cheryl 19). This clearly shows that Delia is not up for a fight with her husband, but he pushes her buttons by telling her she is a hypocrite and kicking around the clothes that she has already sorted (Carney and Smith 83). Sykes pushes Delia to the wall until she gets forced to react. This brings out the good side of Delia. Delia did not do anything to annoy Sykes throughout the story. He seeks her in and out to bring out her evil side. Delia’s morality cannot be questioned. This is because even when he annoys her, she talks and eventually still walks out to let Sykes have his way and to avoid any more quarrel. This clearly shows that even at her husband’s death, we cannot question her morality. She is a moral woman and tries as humanly possible to keep it that way. Delia humbly tolerated Sykes’ torment. Throughout the time that Delia and Sykes lived together, not once did she ever think of harming him. Delia endures an unfulfilling life of endless work and torture from Sykes, but she keeps up with all of it and says so. She does not opt for divorce and puts up with Sykes adultery that he does openly even enjoys showing to her. With all that he does to her, she is the giver of life in her house. She works hard to earn money to ensure they have a house. Sykes does not appreciate all this and instead wants to give the same house to his mistress. But not once does she even wish that he would die. There is no intention in Delia of killing Sykes even though she has million motives (Shelton and Lassiter 45). Delia is not responsible for his ultimate untimely death. If she would have wanted to kill him, she had the chance to poison his food, which she is the one who provided and still prepared. We see Delia even making attempts to make amends with her husband in an effort to bring peace, but to no avail. Delia makes it clear to Sykes that she can put up with anything he brings her way apart from the snake, but he does not pay any attention to her. She says, "Syke, take that snake away from here. You starved me and I put up with you, you beat me up, and I took that, but you have killed all my insides bringing that varmint here" (Hurston and Cheryl 61) Sykes would just not listen to Delia his wife and that is what caused his death. In fact, he would not listen to anyone. Walter, one of the villages told Syke to land a club on the rattle snakes head, but he would not listen. It is psyches evil that brought him to his death. We can argue that his death is nature’s way of avenging all the evil deeds that he had done to his Christian wife Delia. We can see how his wicked and adulterous nature becomes reduced to pitiful and horrible as he dies. The same person that he has been wicked to is the same person he cries out to in the end. We can see that when his marriage begins to deteriorate, Sykes maximizes on his wife’s fear of snakes. With an intention to kill his wife, he places the snake in the laundry hamper with the knowledge that Delia will open the hamper. Sykes is out to kill Delia so that he can marry Bertha and give her the house as promised. His plan does not succeed. Delia manages to escape and the snake attacks Sykes and kills him. Sykes death is a trap that he sets for himself with his selfish drive for another woman (Mannis and Michael 54). Sykes had tried his best to agitate Delia, but he had not succeeded in the fifteen years that they had been together. He knew that the snake would terrify her and bring her over the edge. This was because that was one thing that she genuinely feared. Delia had nothing but love for her husband from the beginning. We learn that she had brought love to the marriage, and Sykes had come with a longing for flesh. He had given her a beating two months after the wedding. Sykes had no work for Delia after he had used her and wrung her dry like sugarcane (Hurston 49). There is nothing he would not do to see her permanently out of his life. It is this intense urge to eliminate Delia that even crowds his mind from thinking about what danger the snake poses to him. His thinking gets unidirectional, and he will stop at nothing until Delia is out to create space for Bertha. This is what kills him, and the wife has no role to play in it. When he finally meets with his death, the same fear that he had hope to instill in Delia with the snake works against him. This is because as much as she can hear his cries from the house she is mortified at the thought of getting anywhere near that snake. Her morality cannot get questioned because by the time light comes Sykes is hanging on to his last breath. She checks on him, but there is nothing much that she could have done to help him. Both ways the poison had stayed in his system for long and nothing could be done. The doctors were too far to help him. Delia is not responsible for Sykes death, and her Christian background makes her moral and upright. Sykes simply got what he had coming (Paulette and Harris 121). Works Cited Dana Gioia, R. S. Gwynn. The art of the short story. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Print Harris, Paulette Ivy. Always a Blessing in the End. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2005. Print Zora Neale, Hurston. Complete Stories. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Print Lassiter, Patrice Shelton. Generations of Black Life. Illinois: Arcadia Publishing, 1999. Print Manis, Andrew Michael. Macon Black And White. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2004. Print Smith, Jessie Carney. Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture. New york: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Print X. J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia. Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry and drama. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. Print Zora Neale Hurston, Cheryl A. Wall. "Sweat". New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Print Read More