HUMA 1303
Bianca Henderson
Prairie View A&M University
October 23, 2016
Snake Will Be Snake
A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing
any permanent chemical change in my own words to increase the rate of reaction. The snake is
the catalyst that was brought by Sykes to come in and cause Delia to have an instant reaction to
leave her home or even go into a state of shock. All the simple things Sykes was doing was not
bothering Delia fast enough, for instance stepping on all her clothes, stumping the white clothes
into the dirt getting them even more dirty and unsorting her sorted clothes. It even got as bad as
cheating on her and even beating her. However, he did not get a good enough reaction from
Delia. He needed something that would speed up the process. Sykes wanted Delia attention more
than he wanted her love. In this time in age the African American male were and is still are at the
bottom of the bucket. They were caged by society and did not have many choices, thus why
Delia and Sykes grew resistant for another. Sykes is a strange character from his actions, from
the way people view him, to the time he lives in, and how he cages Delia in society.
Sykes is characterized as an evil man, because of the way he acts; arrogant, bossy, vain
and most of all cocky. The way he treats people, especially his wife is unacceptable. For
example, “… Long, round, limp, and black fell upon her shoulders and slithered to the floor
beside her. A great terror took hold of her. It softened her knees and dried her mouth so that it
was a full minute before she could cry out or move. Then she saw that is was a big bull whip her
husband liked to carry when he drove … saw him standing there bent over with laughter at her
fright. She screamed at him … You know it would skeer me looks just like a snake an’ you know
how skeered ah is of snakes” (622). Knowing how scared Delia is of snakes and purposely
placing his whip by her leg to scare her, when she becomes scared he laughs at her. As a husband
a man is supposed to care and protect his wife, not do malicious things to hurt and scare her.
Scaring someone can really cause a state of shock, heart attack, even passing out. Since Delia
does all the hard work Sykes should not be purposely scaring her. Moving forward Sykes does so
much outrageous stuff from stepping all over Delia clothes drilling them in the dirt making them
harder to clean, flaunting his floozy and beating her. In the 1900s it looked bad when women got
divorced for it looked bad for the simple fact that they were known as damaged goods. It is not
like Delia can just pick up and leave, so every night she says her prayer in detail: “Oh well
