"Sweat"

Although the plot line is relatively simplistic, Zora Neale Hurston's "Sweat" is a full of emotion. Delia Jones is a wonderful woman who consistently works hard for not a lot of money. She is the epitome of a woman who will stop at nothing to achieve her goals no matter how humbling those goals are: getting her work done on time, feeding herself and her husband, etc. Her work is only made harder by her abusive husband who will stomp on her freshly cleaned clothes (with which she makes her living) with his dirty boots. He does not and cannot appreciate the work that his wife does for him. Not only does he make it harder for her, but he sleeps with other women and buys them gifts with the money she earns. Although the story has a very typical story arch where a person is tested and tried until a breaking point, the story continuously paints the humanist image of this woman who puts so much in only to get so very little in return. what most people would take for granted, she relished. She constantly gets beaten down, physically emotionally and verbally, that she takes every opportunity she can to escape to a happy place. She is able to do so at the end when ironically the two things that scare her most: snakes and her husband, allow her to realize happiness like she hadn't felt in over a decade and a half.