Nan Ni
Mrs. Larson
Sweat Essay
6th Period
A Theme in Black and White
Contemporary critics advocate that stories must be complex, that shades of gray must be present in every character, every event and every action. The literature of Zora Neale Hurston does not abide by such a rule, preferring instead to make her characters wholly innocent and virtuous or blatantly wicked. In Sweat, she uses symbols, her characters' deeds, and the story’s denouement to make a simple argument: Hurston proved that sooner or later, the downtrodden will rise up and overthrow their oppressors; by extension, she has demonstrated that in the timeless struggle between good and evil, good prevails in the end.
Sweat's sumbolism allows Hurston to communicate her theme without compromising the story's content or adopting a didactic manner of narration. In literature, the snake has been treated as a figure for power and evil by the many writers from the authors of the Old Testement to the compliers of Greek myth. Hurston, too, has picked this conventional symbol to stand for both Sykes and evil. Delia's husband embodies an appalling evil which manifests itself in his infidelity, his physical abuse of Delia and finally, in his attempted murder. The bull whip which Sykes throws on Delia at the opening of Sweat is a a symbol of his dominance over her as well as a representation of good's submission to evil at this point in the story: "he picked up the whip and glared down at her." For a moment, Delia believed the whip to be a snake and a “great terror…softened her knees and dried her mouth” (487). The snake icon reappears when Sykes brings home a “six-foot rattler” and Delia “all but fainted outright” when she peered into the cage (491). Again, the evil which Sykes brings into her house pertrifies Delia.
