Delia’s Dynamic Diversity

Title: “Delia’s Dynamic Diversity”

Zora Neale Hurston's “Sweat” is one of her famous short stories. As a popular African American writer, Hurston is famous for writing stories that shows real life as it was in the 1920’s. This story depicts Delia Jones, as a woman who has been in an abusive marriage for a number of years. Hurston uses her encounters/ experiences to justify how cruel and physical abuse influenced African American ladies in 1926. Lastly, Delia gets her comeback on her husband, Sykes for his abuse throughout the years.

From the beginning of “Sweat”, it’s evident that Delia Jones is in an exhausted marriage and moreover, Sykes (her husband) disregards her. Delia’s first instance with Sykes being abusive, is shown when he arrived home late and decides to frighten Delia with a bullwhip, which looked like a snake. Sykes is aware that Delia is afraid of snakes but he still decides to frighten her with the bullwhip, which resembles a snake. Sykes agrees that he just wanted to frighten her by saying, “Course I knowed! That’s how come Ah done it” (Hurston 1). He purposefully frightened her and showed no remorse. Delia then attempts to question his actions, but instead he walks away insulting her. Sykes action makes it clear that Delia is going to have to do some form of revenge against him in order to get his attention or for him to change his behavior.

Furthermore, Sykes disregards Delia’s work and continues to show disrespect. When he first enters the house, Delia sorted all the laundry by colors in order to make the washing of the clothes easier. Sykes comes and kicks the piles together, mixing all the clothes together again. This shows disrespect to Delia and her work. He then went proceeds to step on the white clothes causing more soils and to make it harder for Delia to finish on time. He says, “Ah don’t keer if you never git through” (Hurston 2).Sykes is unaware about how hard Delia works to keep the family going. Delia explains that her sweat is what had kept the family for 15 years and it is what makes the family what it is now. Delia’s first sign of revenge was shown when she “seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose” (Hurston 2). Although Delia is very feeble to physically fight Sykes, Delia portrays that she can stand for herself.

Delia’s revenge comes when Sykes decides to bring a rattlesnake into the house. It is an unforeseen development since he realizes that she is very scared of snakes. To begin with, he prods her by saying that he brought her a blessing, which to Delia is unbelievable. At the point when Delia requests that he take away the snake, Sykes