Sweat Hurston - Grade: A PDF

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Comparative essay between Hurston's "Sweat" and James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues". ...

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Light and Darkness imagery in “Sweat” and “Sonny’s Blues” “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston is a story of a hard-working black woman, Delia, who is emotionally and physically oppressed by her husband, Sykes. Delia relies on religion and her role as the breadwinner to survive Sykes' physical and emotional blows. On the other hand, “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is the story of fraternal reconciliation and the two brothers’ struggle to understand their place in American society as black men. Overwhelmingly, light and dark have been associated with good and evil respectively. However, Hurston and Baldwin question this notion by assigning positive and negative attributes to both. In “Sweat,” light manifests as the whiteness that stratifies Delia and the sunshine which redeems her in the end; however, it is a cultural blackness, or darkness, in “Sonny’s Blues” which liberates Sonny. In both stories, the sun represents a brighter future and catharsis. Sonny is suffering on multiple levels. He is combatting his drug addiction while dealing with living in jail knowing that he has hurt his family. Sonny says "I feel like a man who's been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside" (Baldwin, 127). His reference to the sun suggests that there is a way to mitigate his suffering or at least make it more bearable. The source of the sun (light) that Sonny is referring to is Music. Music offers redemption and alleviates suffering for Sonny. The association of music with sun and fire highlights its cathartic nature. Similarly, at the end of “Sweat,” Sykes dies. The use of light imagery as the “sun was growing warm” indicates that a new era of freedom is on the horizon for Delia. There is a reversal of power whereby the suppressed, Delia, is left in a position of power and her oppressor, Sykes, is left powerless and begging for Delia’s help. The use of light imagery suggests that Delia gains the strength to overpower Sykes: “she never moved, he called, and the sun kept rising” (Hurston,1030).

The use of light imagery in the form of a growing sun indicates that Delia has freed herself from male bonds and has emerged as an independent woman who refuses victimization. Laundry (light) represents both Delia’s economic independence and oppression. While Sykes has hard power due to his gender and physical dominance of Delia, he would be homeless and unable to take care of himself without Delia. Delia maintains her soft power through the laundry. Her role in the domestic sphere enables her to buy a horse and a home. In this way, laundry acts as a tool of liberation. Laundry (light) empowers Delia; however, laundry also makes her susceptible to economic oppression by white people. The portrayal of Delia as a skinny wash woman with “work-worn knees” and knotty limbs insinuates not only Sykes’ physical blows but the arduous nature of Delia’s labor for her invisible white clients (Hurston, 1023). Even though white characters do not exist in the story, their abstraction into metonymy (white folks’ dirty laundry) highlights Delia’s, and in general black people’s economic oppression by white people. The social and financial privilege of white people results in the economic subjugation of Delia and more generally black people. Sykes explicates this by saying “ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks’ clothes outa this house" (Hurston, 1022). He indicates that he doesn't work because he opposes the racist economic system in Eatonville where black people depend on white people for their livelihood. Hurston emphasizes the intersectional nature of Delia’s multiple oppressions. As a result, she asserts that Delia’s gender liberation is inextricably connected to race and class. In this manner white laundry (light) functions as a source of Delia’s economic independence from her abusive husband, it also depicts the economic oppression she endures because of her race. Baldwin makes explicit references to ‘darkness’ as an all-consuming and inevitable part of the black experience. The narrator describes the role of darkness in Sunday night dinners: "you can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street

houses every now and then." The description of darkness outside also represents the great deal of darkness which is in the form of pain, suffering, and death in the black community. Both the narrator and Sonny attempt to survive the darkness in their ways. The narrator chooses ‘respectability’ of teaching algebra and ignoring the struggles within his community. However, the narrator’s association with a heroin addict contradicts his carefully constructed middle-class existence. Mediation on his brother's condition takes him to “somewhere he doesn't want to go” (Baldwin, 125). The somewhere he doesn't want to go is a past which the narrator has rejected by leaving Harlem and accepting bourgeoisie values of the white community. Initially, the narrator tries to define himself in opposition to the collective experience of African Americans in Harlem. However, eventually, the narrator becomes aware of the beauty and strength that have resulted from the suffering of his people. It is through his gradual identification with the communal black experience that he finds himself. Baldwin characterizes the black experience with darkness (pain) but asserts that there is light in cultural blackness. Through this interplay of darkness and blackness, Baldwin challenges the hegemonic conception of blackness as inherently negative. Sonny tells his tale of suffering through the blues. He seeks musical membership in a predominantly African American genre of music. Sonny, unlike the narrator, has confronted the darkness. He knows the dimness of the streets and the blankness of heroin. For Sonny, blues tame the darkness and terror of the night. In fact, his ability to play the blues so fantastically is evidence of his knowledge of sense of self and sorrows and joys which are necessary for authentic blues. The narrator realizes that when Sonny plays the blues, the community temporarily transcends the pain by sharing their suffering through his music. The narrator acknowledges that the music Sonny played "hit something in me" (Baldwin, 147). It evokes an image of his collective past and a tale of his people's joys, struggles and sorrows that "must be heard" for "it's the only light we've got in all this darkness" (Baldwin, 147). He realizes that if he rejects his past, he

has nothing to sustain him. He no longer feels the need to repress his past and now through this internal transformation, he could “live forever” (Baldwin, 148). The music penetrates the narrator's cultural deafness and leads to his gradual enlightenment. By accepting Sonny's blues, he also makes them his own. The narrator says, “freedom lurked around us, and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did” (Baldwin, 148). By breaking from his ideas of degenerate blackness, the narrator finds light in embracing jazz and blues as facets of blackness. Light and dark imagery have a complex purpose in both stories. Light manifests itself in the form of sun and white laundry and collectively functions as a signifier of empowerment in both the stories however it also signifies Delia’s economic oppression. Even though she is free from Sykes’ abuse, her identity as a black woman still leaves her victim to racism. On the other hand, darkness plays a much larger role in “Sonny’s Blues.” The story explores the different ways the two brothers choose to cope with the menacing effects of this darkness and their reconciliation through an Afro-American musical form. Through his profession and lifestyle, the narrator attempts to present himself as respectable so that he may curb the effect of racism. However, even attempts to become compatible with mainstream values do not prevent conflict. Baldwin suggests that instead of looking at one’s self through the eye of others and make themselves more ‘presentable’ to the white gaze, black people must recognize black identity as dynamic, fluid and powerful. While white people are physically absent from both these stories, the structures of oppression are still in place and affect the daily lives of these characters. In their different depictions of racism, both stories suggest that racism is inescapable for black people.

Works Cited: Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” n.p, n.d.

Hurston, Zora Neale. “Sweat.” The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Oxford, 1992. pp. 1019-1030....