"Sweat" is a short story, and was first published in literary magazine Fire!! in 1926. Hurston uses the short story form to construct vignettes depicting the various forces that shaped African American communities in the 1920s. The short story allowed her to deliver concise narratives with strong political messages, and she infused them with dialect and description to flesh out her characters and their world in a constrained format.
Hurston's "Sweat" defies being categorized into any one sub-genre, but it has elements of folklore and southern Gothic literature—literature that is characterized by its focus on dark and often supernatural themes, as well as its use of suspense and foreboding. For example, although the rattlesnake in the story is a completely natural phenomenon, its role in Sykes's death—as well as several instances of foreshadowing surrounding snakes and death—has a note of divine justice about it after Sykes's ongoing torment of Delia. And Hurston's almost parodic characterization of Sykes as a type of the abusive husband, as well as the twist ending, has an element of folklore to it. In "Sweat," Hurston uses these elements to build tension and draw the reader into a world with which they may not be familiar while centering the challenges faced by African Americans in the south.
