The history of "Sweat" by Zora Neale Hurston is filled up with many moral and religious symbols. This account is about a day to day Black, female in the South and how she will keep to her trust in God to see her through the hell she endures coping with an abusive man. Throughout this tale there are several spiritual symbols that show how Delia and Sykes are two different people on the different moral spectrum as it pertains to good and evil, and how good always prevails.
Delia Jones virtually works her hands to the bone, and she uses her beliefs in God to shield her from her husband's barrage of each type of abuse imaginable. From the beginning of the tale, Delia shows how she can take take great pride in in her work, her small personality, and her strong faith in God. Delia is shown as being battered down and physically poor from the years of work and abuse from Sykes, yet she is still strong in her faith. Throughout the account it discusses her worn hands and knees we can expect it has the from the weekends cleansing clothes and the quanity. "She gathered the soiled clothes on Sunday when she came back the clean things. Weekend night after church, she sorted them and put the white what to soak. It preserved her almost a fifty percent day's start. A great hamper in the bed room performed the clothes that she helped bring home. It had been a great deal neater when compared to a amount of bundles laying around"(Hurston 133). Through the years to do this she has lost the beauty she experienced once possesed.
Completely complete opposite of Delia's personality is her spouse, Sykes. He is physically abusive toward his better half, and he requires good thing about their relationship by spending most of Delia's money she gets from cleaning clothes on his mistress, Bertha. While Sykes is literally strong, he's spiritually fragile. He shows that he is spiritually poor by belittling Delia every chance he gets. (Hurston 133). This essentially the most prevalent circumstance of Sykes hoping to pay from his lack spirituality.
Certain objects and situations in the story suggest the effect of faith. The white clothes Delia washes in the story are symbolic of her character. White signifies her well worth and saintly ways as she handles Sykes' torture. Whenever Sykes stomps on Delia white clothes and makes them grubby shows his lack of ability to accept whatever is 100 % pure and related to god, the father. The religious interconnection of Sykes is his use of snakes and bad, shown twice in this storyline. Sykes runs on the whip to frighten Delia by rubbing it on her make and making her believe that it is a snake. This is when it's first shown how petrified of snakes Delia is. She screams, 'Sykes, why you throw dat whip on me like dat? You know it would skeer me appears as being a snake, an' you understands how skeered Ah is of snakes'(Hurston 133). Also, later in the storyline Sykes places a real snake nearby the front door covering it in a soapbox to frighten Delia. Both of these types of using the snake can be used as a biblical example from the storyline of Adam and Eve when Satan needed the form of the snake. Also, from this reference it demonstrates the story plainly makes Sykes out to be an inherently evil character. Sykes message or calls himself a "snake charmer" that could be in relation to the devil being able to take on the character of the snake.
The style of good and bad in this account boils down to a proper create and clever realization. Sykes' own violent actions towards Delia throughout the storyline conclude being his demise. In the long run when the snake that Sykes uses to frighten Delia gets loose and she flees the home, Sykes' enters the home unknowingly and makes way too much noise in the kitchen and the snake bites him. Sunlight starts to come up rather quickly after he has been bitten. The sunrise is symbolic of Delia's independence from Sykes and all the evil and bad things he presents. When Sykes is inactive, the sun has finally increased and Delia provides the independence that she deserves. This going on also demonstrates it is a new day and Delia gets the opportunity she's always wanted to get her fresh start. "Jurden water, black an' col' Chills de body, not de heart An' Ah wantah combination Jurden in uh calm time. " (Hurston 141). The Israelites needed to cross this river to get to the promise land, which is comparable to what Delia got to undergo when dealing with Sykes.
