Modernism

I have chosen the Harlem Renaissance to studied more about solely because I am interested. I want to see and read the works of the African Americans, some coming straight out of war. I am intrigued to learn and see what their ideas were and the way they felt and saw life.



The story "Sweat" by Zora Neale Hurston, was a sad story with a good moral to it. The story was about a women who helped out the "white" people for some money, and her husband hated that, and hated her all around. She would work and clean for him and her both while all the day he would be gone cheating on her. When he would return home he would yell and often beat her. "Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks clothes outa dis house." "He picked up the whip and glared at her." It bothered me the way he treated her, because even though that was back in the old days and that is how the majority of marriages were, it still happens today. It is not acceptable and there needs to be something done. This story ended good, because Delia was terrified of snakes, or basically anything that moved. Well one day as a mean thing to do her husband went and put a rattle snake in her clothes basket. The snake slithered out shaking his tail, but she ran off. The next morning her husband came home and got attacked by his own set up. "Outside Delia herd a cry that might have come from a maddened chimpanzee, a tricken gorilla. All terror, all the horror, all the rage that man possibly could express, without a recognizable human sound."

In "Sweat", Zora relates this story to the Harlem Renaissance by showing the dialect of the African Americans to show a piece of their lifestyle. "You ain't got no business doing it, Gawd knows it's a sin. Some day Ah'm gointuh drop dead from some of yo' foolishness. 'Nother thing, where you been wid mah rig? Ah feeds dat pony. He ain't fuh you to be drivin wid no bull whip." Another example of the African American culture she describes is the way the women lives day to day. She shows how Delia doesn't have all the rights that the white people have, but she has to do what she can to survive.