Previous Next

Throughout the story, Hurston uses Biblical allusions in both narration and dialogue. Delia, a churchgoing woman, comforts herself with the assurance that Sykes will “reap his sowing,” a reference to the Biblical promise that God will punish evildoers. Later, while fighting with Sykes, she tells him in relation to his violence against her that her “cup is done run over,” meaning that she has had more than enough of his abuse, an ironic reversal of the use of the phrase in the Bible to refer to an abundance of blessings. As she drives home from church, she sings a spiritual about crossing the chilly waters of the Jordan River, a metaphor for death to which Hurston returns at the moment of Sykes’s death, which she describes as a “cold river” rising over him. 

The plot itself uses elements of the story of Adam and Eve, adapted to a different ending. As in the Bible, “Sweat” revolves around a man, a woman, a snake, and a garden. Unlike the Biblical version, however, in this story it is Sykes, the man, who introduces the snake to the story, not because the snake tempts him but because of his pride. He believes he can use the snake to drive Delia out of their home and away from the garden. In the Bible, the story ends with God expelling Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, cursing Adam with a life of labor ending in death and Eve to be forever subordinate to her husband. However, in Hurston’s revision of the story, the snake bite that kills Sykes frees Delia from Sykes’s domination and leaves Delia safely in her garden.

Previous section Themes Next section Dialect

Take a Study Break