` Sweat` by Zora Neale Hurston

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Literary Analysis of Sweat

Introduction

Sweat is basically the residue of effort . Whenever people do enough physical activity to cause their bodies to heat up , the body produces sweat in to cool down . No other word can best describe the situation of Delia in Zora Neale Hurston 's short story with the same title . Sweat is about the struggle of an overworked Black woman with her shattered marriage to a lazy and abusive husband . The aim of this is to analyze

different literary elements of the short story particularly the story 's use of symbolism , setting , and characters

Symbolism

There are a number of symbols that Hurston utilized in the short story The first one that appears in the story is the pile of clothes that the lead character (Delia ) needed to wash . Discrimination is not the main issue of the story , but the story somehow brings up this issue through the symbolism of clothes . The clothes are sorted out first before they are to be washed , much like the segregation that African-Americans suffered . She squatted in the kitchen floor beside the great pile of clothes , sorting them into small heaps according to color , and humming a song in a mournful key (Hurston 25 . A hint of angst is suggested by the author by making Delia hum in a mournful key ' The pile of clothes symbolizes the people while the sorting of the colored clothes symbolizes discrimination . One symbolical action derived...