Is Delia right to let Sykes die at the end of the story?
What will be an ideal response?
- This may be an uncomfortable question for students, but the point of Hurston’s story is to make us consider uncomfortable issues. It may be important to remind students that Delia is not responsible for Sykes’s being bitten by the snake; he has fallen into his own trap. If she is guilty of anything, it is only of not trying to help her husband—a sin of omission rather than commission. There is little question that a jury would acquit her of any charge. If ever a woman could claim extenuating circumstances, it is Delia. The more interesting question is whether Delia is morally culpable. In this regard, Hurston seems to suggest that Sykes has made Delia a person callous enough to watch coldly her own husband die. The ending has led one critic, Robert Bone, in his Down-Home: Origins of the Afro-American Short Story (New York: Columbia UP, 1988), to call “Sweat” a self-indulgent “revenge fantasy.” But most critics have agreed with Lillie P. Howard, who viewed “Sweat” as a complex moral investigation of a good woman in an extreme situation:
Delia could have warned him, saved him, but she understandably does not. She has been hardened by his constant abuse and has built up a “spiritual earthworks” against him. Poetic justice has been rendered. (Zora Neale Hurston [New York: Twayne, 1980] 65)
What do your students think?
Language Arts & World Languages
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