Sweat: Quotes by Theme

The Importance of Home and Belonging

Too late for everything except her little home. She had built it for her old days, and planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely to her, lovely.

Early in the story, Delia lies awake in bed after fighting with Sykes, thinking over how Sykes’s cruelty has ruined their marriage and left her without hope for love. She takes comfort in knowing she has a good home, one her work has paid for, surrounded by the garden she has planted. Unlike her husband, her home is something she can depend on. Hurston’s emphasis on the garden foreshadows the end of the story, when Delia finds sanctuary among her plants after fleeing the snake Sykes has put in the house.

’Don’t think Ah’m gointuh be run ’way fum mah house neither. Ah’m goin’ tuh de white folks bout you, mah young man, de very nex’ time you lay yo’ han’s on me. Mah cup is done run ovah.’

After Sykes refuses to remove the box containing the rattlesnake, Delia becomes angry, understanding that he has put the snake there to force her from the house. However, she refuses to leave, which underlines Hurston’s theme of the importance of home. Delia refers to the house as specifically hers and moreover threatens to tell her powerful white customers Sykes mistreats her, demonstrating both how important the house is and how her confidence is increasing as the story progresses. While Delia has put up with Sykes’s abuse and neglect for many years, his attempts to take the house from her are the attacks that finally cause her cup to run over, that is, for her to refuse to take any more mistreatment.

True Christian Faith versus Hypocrisy

’Yeah, you just come from de church house on a Sunday night, but heah you is gone to work on them clothes. You aint nothing but a hypocrite. One of them amen-corner Christians—sing, whoop, and shout, then come home and wash white folks’ clothes on the Sabbath.’

This passage occurs in the opening scene of the story, when Sykes returns home to find Delia, recently returned from a full day at church, beginning to work on sorting her customers’ laundry late on Sunday night. Sykes accusing Delia of hypocrisy is an example of irony, since Hurston will show in this scene and throughout the story that it’s Delia who possesses true devotion to her faith, while Sykes is the hypocrite. Sykes is quick to use the language of the church against Delia, but his actions show that he is far from devout, engaging throughout the story in behavior that exemplifies the deadly sins of wrath, lust, sloth, and greed. While Delia sorting clothes on Sunday may technically break the commandment against work on the Sabbath, Hurston shows patient, hard-working Delia as faithful to the spirit of Christian life.

She stayed to the night service—'Love feast’—which was very warm and full of spirit. In the emotional winds her domestic trials were borne far and wide so that she sang as she drove homeward,
‘Jurden water, black an’ col’
Chills de body, not de soul
An’ Ah wantah cross Jurden in uh calm time.’

This moment occurs as Delia returns home after a day of services at the new congregation she has joined to avoid Sykes. Her relaxed and happy state as she drives home demonstrates how she thrives when she is able to escape from her husband’s abusive presence and how her connection to her faith strengthens her. Her time at the church has given her love she does not get from her marriage, and that feeling makes her troubles at home seem far away. Hurston portrays Delia singing as she drives the wagon, both to indicate her contentment and, through the lyrics of the spiritual, which refer to crossing the River Jordan as a metaphor for death, to foreshadow Sykes’s coming demise.

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