Domestic Violence In Sweat By Zora Neale Hurston

“Sweat” and the Issue of Domestic Violence

The principle characters in Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston, are Delia, a hardworking washerwoman who plays the role of the protagonist and her abusive husband Sykes, the antagonist, who commits adultery and is physically abusive to his wife. Hurston writes, “Two months after the wedding he had given her the first beating “(Zora Hurston 2). Sweat explores the social issue of domestic violence by not only representing the subject in clear and extreme images but by using a variety of literary tools to emphasize the betrayal in common terms for that period with historical similarities.
The protagonist, Delia, who had been married to Sykes for fifteen years, had an extreme fear of snakes, which Sykes used as a tool to torment her and ultimately intended to use as an instrument of her death. Delia says, “You knows Ah’m even feared uh earth worms. Thass de biggest snake Ah evah did see. Kill’im

Hurston also uses a tree as an important symbol much like the tree that produced the apple that resulted in the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. However, in Hurston’s story, the tree represents something similar but, at the same time, something very different. In this case, the tree, a chinaberry tree, does not produce a nourishing forbidden fruit but rather clusters of lavender flowers that are beautiful in bloom but with the coming of spring result persistent, poisonous yellow berries. The tree in Sweat represents the changing of the seasons and the ultimate realization that even though something may be beautiful, as Delia once was before her marriage, that time and place can alter an event- especially with domestic