Answer to Question 1
- There are two different levels of language employed in the story. Hurston presents the narration in sharp and evocative standard English, whereas the dialogue is written in the rural black dialect of her native Central Florida. Their constant alternation heightens the storys considerable nervous energy and suspense. The dialect also adds realism to the story: it evokes real people and a real region. Students sometimes experience some initial difficulty in reading dialogue in dialect because it looks different from conventional English. It is important to get them to hear it. You might ask the class why Hurston chose to write the dialogue in dialect. Would the story be different if the dialogue were written in standard American English?
A volume of critical essays dealing with Sweat, edited by Cheryl Wall, is available from Rutgers UP (in its series dealing with short fiction, Women Writers: Texts and Contexts). Students planning to write on Hurston will find it helpful to read Laura M. Zaidmans comprehensive article on the author in
Dictionary of Literary Biography 86: American Short-Story Writers, 19101945, edited by Bobby Ellen Kimbel (Detroit: Gale, 1989), which provides an insightful and highly readable introduction to her life and work.
Beverly Bailey of Seminole Community College in Sanford, Florida, has informed us that Hurstons hometown of Eatonville hosts an annual festival in her honor. In addition to music, crafts, food, and entertainment, there are also scholarly presentations. For information on the Zora Neale Hurston Festival see
www.zorafestival.or g. Prof. Bailey also recommends Steven Glassman and Kathryn Lee Seidels
Zora in Florida (Orlando: U of Central Florida, 1991), which Bailey calls a fine study of the place that nurtured and inspired Hurstons work, the frontier wilderness of central Florida and the all-black town of Eatonville.
Answer to Question 2
- This may be an uncomfortable question for students, but the point of Hurstons story is to make us consider uncomfortable issues. It may be important to remind students that Delia is not responsible for Sykess 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 husbanda 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?
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