In the short story "Sweat" by Zora Hurston, an unfortunately common story of a married African-American woman in the early twentieth century is accurately portrayed. Delia devotes her days working to support herself and her husband Sykes, while at the same time he deliberately has open affairs with other women and constantly beats her in order to suppress her will. She is finally liberated from her captor when his heartless joke of scaring her with a snake backfires, leaving him dead. In "Sweat", the snake symbolically depicts the emergence of Delia's independence from a dominating man.
After approximately fifteen years of being controlled by Sykes, Delia can take no more. Delia's emergence from control begins with a comparison to the snake in the line, "Two or three days later it had digested its meal of frogs and literally came to life"(l678). This foreshadowed the scene where Delia stands up to Sykes after allowing the years of abuse and neglect to pass through her. Just as the snake had awakened to escape from the cage it had been placed in, Delia had begun to do the same. Soon after, Delia returns home to find the box containing the snake in, "complete silence"(l680). By finding out later in the story that the snake escaped from its cage, a direct comparison between the snake and Delia can be drawn. Delia, just as the snake had finally done, had found her way out of her husband's grip. She was now free enough not to let his grip wrap back around her again. Finally, the snake that was brought in to tease Delia would finally serve its true purpose. While Delia listened outside of her house, "without fear now"(l 680), the snake struck at Sykes with a blow that would end his life. This blow from the snake was just as powerful as Delia's thrashing of her husband in their last argument that ended in Delia stating, "Ah hates yuh lak uh suck-egg dog"(l679). Sykes realized that his control over Delia had disappeared, and that he was the one who was ultimately under her control.
The snake that parallels Delia's emergence from domination effectively portrays her struggle to cope with a man that had lost sight of what was most important to him. No longer would she have to conform to him. She was now independent enough to wait outside while, "she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that she knew"(l681).
