Literary Devices In Sweat By Delia

Travis Hancock
Professor Watson
ENGL 2393
12 March 2017

At the beginning of “Sweat” Delia started her string of biblical references by proclaiming that Sykes, “…is gointer reap his sowing.” The author then continues to describe Delia’s work, “…crawled over the earth in Gethsemane and up the rocks of Clavary…” Lastly, we see Delia singing a song about crossing the Jordan river into the promise land as in the Bible. These references serve to foreshadow the outcome of this story. In the order, I just quoted: first Sykes is going to receive the same or similar pain as he has been causing Delia, Delia has gone through the pains and the trials but she can rest assured her saving day is coming, and as we continue to read we get closer to the end

This is clear in the last sentence, “…while inside she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye…” Many things perform a role in helping her finally get annoyed with him. Delia said early on in the story, she doesn’t care that Sykes is with Bertha but she doesn’t want to see him around her house anymore. Although this demonstrates that she wants her house, the main consideration that she lets Sykes die is because she’s drained with getting beaten and God has accommodated an answer for

This starts by the inclination Dee has to approach the world without fear. She views the world as a white woman, back then, rather than an African American woman like her mother and sister-timid and afraid. She then comes back from getting educated and allows this to cloud her judgement and think that she is above those who aren’t educated. She continues this attitude all the way to the end of her visit where she tells her mother that she doesn’t understand her heritage and then continues on condescending to her sister, “’You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you’d never know it.’”

“Everyday Use” uses the point of view of the mother of Dee and Maggie, “…Maggie asked me, ‘Mamma, when did Dee ever have any friends?’” By setting the mother to be the narrator, Walker has given the story a more mature and experienced feel which allows the reader to know more than just emotion. It gives the reader a background knowledge of the story. If the story were written from either of the girls’ point of view it would have been biased against the other and not contained much background. This viewpoint also gives us a more in depth knowledge of the overall