June 16th, 2009
“Biography” BibliographyBoyd, Valerie. Zora Neale Hurston: The Howard University Years. The JBHE Foundation 2003Hill, Marion Lynda. Social Rituals and the Verbal Art of Zora Neale Hurston. Howard University Press Voices from the gaps biography. Zora Neale Hurston. University of Minnesota 2006“Sweat” BibliographySeidel, Kathryn Lee. “The Artist in the Kitchen: The Economics of Creativity in Hurston’s Sweat.’” Zora in Florida. Eds. Steve Glassman and Kathryn Lee Seidel. Orlando: U of Central Florida P, 1977. 110-120.
Sweat” reveals much of Hurston’s nostalgic memories, though it primarily focuses on Eatonville’s economic dependence on the neighboring town of Winter Park. When Hurston was growing up many of Winter Park’s inhabitants were white snow birds with money. Like Delia in “Sweat,” African-American residents of Eatonville made daily pilgrimages across the rail road tracks to clean houses, tend gardens, cook meals and watch the children of Winter Park
Williams, Barbara L. Fall From Eden: God’s Judgment in Hurston’s “Sweat”.
Because of its semi-tropical climate and its idealistic mission, Eatonville is an appropriate background for Hurston’s Edenic imagery in “Sweat.” The basic reference to the black/white and male/female conflict is very much at home within a tale whose foundational images underscore marital and moral tension.
Uppling, Jill. “Sweat” and “The Gilded Six-Bits”:Between Hurston’s Biography and Education.
“Sweat” is influenced not only by Hurston’s childhood town but also by her relationship with her employer, Fannie Hurst. Hurston met the writer Hurst at Opportunity’s award dinner, May 1, 1925, one year prior to the writing of “Sweat.” Hurston felt dependent on Fannie Hurst’s white patronage for recognition, much like Delia did in “Sweat.”
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
June 16th, 2009
I used this image because the woman in it is crying as is Delia Jones and because it looks as if it is an x-ray picture. Therefore, character is crying on the inside and on the outside.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
June 15th, 2009
.jpg)
This flower is called “The Bleeding Heart.” It represents the emotions of Delia Jones about her marriage. She put everything into her marriage and her still came out broken and bleeding.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
June 15th, 2009
Zora Neale Hurston was born January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama to John and Lucy Hurston. During her life, Zora Neale Hurston claimed her birthdate and place as the year 1901 in Eatonville, Florida, an all-black neighborhood, one of the first in the United States of America. Her family moved back to this place within the first years of her life where her father, who was a preacher and a carpenter, was elected mayor for three terms. Her mother died in 1904 and her father remarried sometime later. After finishing Morgan Academy in Baltimore in 1917, Zora Neale Hurston went on to historically black college Howard University while supporting herself as a manicurist. According to the University of Minnesota, her first published story appeared in Howard University’s literary magazine in 1921 and she received recognition in 1925 when another story was accepted by the New York magazine Opportunity, edited by Charles S. Johnson. After she won second place in the Opportunity contest, Johnson and others, including Alain Locke, encouraged Hurston to move to New York. One of her earliest works was called “Mule Bone,” which was a comedy that she had written along with Langston Hughes. To this day, one of her most famous works is “Their Eyes were watching God,” which was adapted into a movie produced and directed by Oprah Winfrey. Zora Neale Hurston grew from a young child who dramatized the Greco-Roman tale of Persephone to a prolific author challenged the hate that she saw everyday and broke the color barriers of the pen. She truly was a genius of the south.
Posted in Uncategorized, Author Biography | No Comments »
June 15th, 2009
The main summary of the story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston is about a woman named Delia Jones and her husband, Sykes. Sykes, knowing her fear of rattlesnakes, plays a horrible joke on her when he comes into the house that night as she is doing her job washing clothes for white people. Sykes hates this and berates her about it. In the course of their argument about this, Sykes calls her a hypocrite for washing “white folks” clothes and it is also revealed that he is cheating on her with a woman named Bertha. Delia strikes Sykes with an iron skillet from the stove as he was about to hit her just as he had done so many times before. He leaves the house, leaving Delia alone in her bed, after finishing her laundry, to ponder the brokenness of the foundation of their marriage. In the wee hours of the night and in the early hours of the morning, Delia hears the cry of her abusive husband and the sound of a rattlesnake. When she looks to see what is going on, Sykes’ neck is swollen and one of his eyes looking at her hoping that she will come to him. The sun is starting to come up. All of a sudden, she realizes what had happened and that it is too late for him to get any help. The theme of this story is a mixture of an old cliché and a new thought, but it is fitting to what has happened in the story from the beginning to the ending:
Do unto others as you would like done unto you. Be careful how you treat the fears of other people because those very same fears may destroy you one day. There are many different elements that Zora Neale Hurston uses in order to orchestrate this point in the story. One of the things that she uses is the power of organization and the structure of the story. She starts with the most immediate part of the story. Delia is washing the clothes in the house at night after church on Sunday when her husband comes in and they go through an entire altercation. Throughout the process of the argument-turned-fight that they are having, there are some facts revealed about Sykes and his rocky marital to Delia. After he leaves Delia goes up to bed and Hurston reveals their past. Zora Neale Hurston uses the beginning of the story to give the reader a hint of who Sykes really is, but the middle of the story confirms it. Therefore, the end is foreshadowed and then confirmed when it is reached. Zora Neale Hurston uses some type of “sandwich” approach with her writing of this short story. The beginning shows the present, the middle of the story shows the past, and then the end of the story shows the present once again. Another method that Zora Neale Hurston uses to show the theme and the main point of the story is the point of view. The story is being told from the point of view of third person omniscient. It would not have worked very well with the theme if Sykes or even if Delia had told the story. Each of them have their own bias to bring the story would not have been told innocently from either of them. It works better by the fact the Zora Neale Hurston told the story as an all-knowing character. She brought the facts and nothing but the facts. There was nothing to cloud her judgement since she was the third party who did not know either Delia or Sykes Jones intimately. She was just a regular person telling the story for the benefit of the reader. This why the theme and the main point works so well with the point of view that the story is told from. Overall, the story consists of three characters. However, in speech and dialogue, the story consists of only two characters. It’s hard to say how many characters there really are. I could also include the rattlesnake since it was an integral part in the story. Altogether, I believe that there were four characters because each one of them all contributed or took away from the lives of each other. There was Bertha. She was the woman that Sykes had been cheating on Delia with. In the story, Sykes mentions that he hates “skinny women.” Bertha was heavy and Delia was skinny. This could have been an early give away to the cheating that Sykes was doing. Of course, there are Delia and Sykes Jones. Delia is hard-working woman who had been putting up with an abusive marriage. She had one been soft, but the abuse made her hard and callous on the outside and a little but on the inside. Sykes is her husband who came into the marriage with lust, according to the story, and gave Delia her first beating not even a year into the marriage. Finally, there is the rattlesnake who had given Sykes his just reward. The setting and imagery shows a lot about the theme and is very descriptive. For instance, when Delia is lying in bed, the story says that she looked over the “debris on their marital path.” It gives the reader their clue that their marriage was rocky even from the start. Another place where Sykes is just about to die and yet the sun is coming up. This may signify the fact that Delia is almost free from the blood, sweat, and tears that she had put into that marriage. She would be relieved when Sykes would die. The story mostly takes place at night and night is used to signify negativity whereas sun and light is used as the opposite. However, now my question is this: What was her reaction when she realized that her husband was going to die? Was she happy, relieved, or sad? That is one of the things that Zora Neale Hurston never showed in the story.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
June 15th, 2009
This image was chosen because of the title and because of the story behing the title. The title of the story is “Sweat” and one of the things that causes sweat is heat. One of the things that can cause heat is work as Delia had done her entire life.
Posted in Images | No Comments »
June 15th, 2009
The summary of “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston is about a woman named Delia Jones who works as a clothes washer for “white folks.” She is doing her job on a Sunday night when her husband, Sykes, comes in the form of playing a trick on her with his black bull whip that resembles a snake because he knows how much she hates snakes. He is also upset about the fact that she is washing clothes for white people and calling her a hypocrite because she does so. As the conversation heats up, it is revealed that Sykes is cheating on his wife with another woman named Bertha and also that he is very abusive toward her. As he is about to hit Delia as he has so many times before, she picks up an iron skillet from the stove and strikes him with it. After some time and some insults to her, Sykes leaves the house. Delia goes to bed in tears remembering how and why they got married as well as when the abuse from her husband had first began. She mentions that if Sykes wasn’t cheating on her with Bertha then it would be somebody else. As she drifts off to sleep, she hears a scream outside and it is Sykes. He is calling her hopefully, but yet is expecting no answer. She opens the blinds and heard the sound of a rattlesnake leaving the premises. She walks to the door and he hears. “Delia, is dat you Ah heah?” Sykes reached for the door and for her. His neck was swollen and one of his eyes was wounded. As Delia watched with forgiving sympathy, she realized that Orlando and its doctors were too far away. “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.”
Posted in Uncategorized, Short Story Summary | No Comments »
June 2nd, 2009
The reason I chose this image is because the story talks of the rest that she attempts to have when Sykes leaves the house. Delia is pondering the foundation of her marriage to Sykes.
Posted in Blogroll | No Comments »