Sweat: Additional Key Quotes

’There’s plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh sugar-cane. It’s round, juicy an’ sweet when dey gits it. But dey squeeze an’ grind, squeeze an’ grind an’ wring tell dey wring every drop uh pleasure dat’s in ’em out. When dey’s satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats ’em jes lak dey do a cane-chew. Dey throws ’em away.

Joe Clarke makes this speech to the men assembled on the porch of his store, chewing sugar cane, in the midst of a conversation about Delia and Sykes. All agree that Sykes is a bad husband whose abuse has ruined Delia. In this extended metaphor, Clarke compares the wives of men like Sykes to sugar cane, which releases sweet juice when chewed but is not itself edible, so that when the juice is gone, the dry cane is discarded. Men like Sykes treat women as disposable and existing only for their pleasure, like sugar cane.

Quote 2

Delia’s work-worn knees crawled over the earth in Gethsemane and up the rocks of Calvary many, many times during these months.

This passage occurs in the middle of the story, during a period when Sykes is actively courting Bertha and fighting with Delia. Here, Hurston uses Biblical allusion to compare Delia’s suffering to the suffering of Jesus, describing her on the path Jesus took from his betrayal in the garden of Gethsemane to his crucifixion at Calvary, climbing on her knees like a devout believer on a pilgrimage. This allusion underscores Delia’s faithfulness to her marriage and to her religion, even in a miserable time.

Quote 3

Finally she grew quiet, and after that, coherent thought. With this, stalked through her a cold, bloody rage. Hours of this. A period of introspection, a space of retrospection, then a mixture of both. Out of this an awful calm. ‘Well, Ah done de bes’ Ah could. If things aint right, Gawd knows taint mah fault.’

After Delia flees her house to escape the rattlesnake, she climbs to the barn’s hay loft and lies there until she calms down. In this passage, Hurston illustrates the final stages of Delia’s transformation from a wife resigned to abuse to an independent woman. Although Delia begins this section of the story with renewed hope that Sykes may change, after she finds he has let the snake loose in the house, she finally fully accepts that her marriage is ruined and that Sykes has ruined it. This moment plays a crucial role in Hurston’s emphasis on the importance of female independence.

Quote 4

A surge of pity too strong to support bore her away from that eye that must, could not, fail to see the tubs. He would see the lamp. Orlando with its doctors was too far. She could scarcely reach the Chinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that she knew.

These are the final lines of the story. Having come to the door of the house and seen Sykes’s face and neck swollen from snake bites, Delia returns to her garden. She has seen hope on his face but knows that he will die since the doctors are too far even if she goes for help immediately. This moment provides a satisfying reversal of the pattern throughout the story in which Delia holds out hope for Sykes to show mercy, while he makes sure she is aware of how much better he is treating Bertha. In this moment, she is the one denying him mercy while knowing that, because he can see her washtubs and lamp, he must realize that she is nearby, watching him suffer. The metaphor of the cold river coming to extinguish his eye recalls the spiritual Delia is singing when she first discovers the snake in the house, which refers to death as crossing the River Jordan.

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