After
reading the story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, I instantly thought about the
movie “Enough” starring Jennifer Lopez. Both the story and movie are about the
mental and physical abuse two women face and how they finally achieved
liberation.
In “Sweat”, Delia is mentally and physically
abused by her husband, Sykes. Sykes does not seem concerned with her feelings
and constantly yells at her about her job. Suddenly, tired of all the abuse,
she screams about how hard she’s been working and picks up an iron skillet from
the stove as if to strike him. He is taken back by his wife’s actions,
especially since she usually just bottled up her anger without trying to defend
herself. Delia realized that she didn’t deserve the abuse and was willing to
stop her husband from putting her down. At the end of story, Delia decides to
not help her husband after he is bitten by a rattlesnake and watches him die.
In “Enough”, what starts off as a
happy marriage results in a series of adultery and abuse. Slim, the main character,
is slapped around by her husband, Mitch, when she tries to confront him about
him cheating on her. Mitch uses their daughter Gracie as leverage to keep her
under control. Slim tries desperately to get away from him and keep her
daughter safe. After being told by a lawyer that there is nothing she can do to
protect herself from Mitch, Slim chooses to train with a tough personal trainer
to be ready for any move that Mitch could possibly make. She becomes strong
both physically and emotionally and decides that the only way to free herself
from Dave is to kill him. In both cases, death is the only thing that allowed the
women to be let free from their husbands’ brutal control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3LVthzm88g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA9Byir_S1g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3LVthzm88g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA9Byir_S1g
Yordan, I loved your post, I almost used this as well! I completely agree with your connection that you made with Slim from "Enough" and Delia from "Sweat" because at some point, both woman fought back against their husbands. In both the movie and the story, the women each become stronger throughout the process of fighting back, and they both change as a person throughout the story. The point that you made about death being the only thing in both cases to free the women from their husbands was very true, and I enjoyed reading your post very much.
ReplyDeleteThis class must really love this movie because Rashard posted about this for the first Media Outtake.
ReplyDelete