Caricature, or the grotesque representation of a person, is used by Hurston to create a comic or exaggerated effect. In the short story "Sweat," the character of Sykes is caricatured in a number of ways. He is constantly berating and mistreating his wife, Delia, and is shown to enjoy doing so. He betrays their marriage by taking a mistress, whom he frequently brings home and flaunts in front of Delia, and undermines Delia's business by kicking her laundry and belittling her work. By outlining all the ways in which Sykes is callous or inadequate, Hurston makes him a caricature of the abusive husband.
Sykes takes pleasure in making Delia's life as difficult as possible. He first scares Delia by throwing his snake-like whip at her, and then brings a real snake into their home despite knowing Delia is afraid of serpents. In tandem with his actions, Sykes's dialogue is consistently unpleasant; he frequently threatens Delia and uses a menacing tone throughout their conversations. In the opening pages of the story, Sykes kicks Delia's "whitest" pile of laundry, scattering it across the room. He then remarks:
Ah don't keer if you never git through. Anyhow, Ah done promised Gawd and a couple of other men, Ah aint gointer have it in mah house. Don't gimme no lip neither, else Ah'll throw 'em out and put mah fist up side yo' head to boot.
By first disregarding Delia's concern about her laundry business and then threatening her with physical harm, Sykes is portrayed as an irredeemably bad husband. Hurston plays on the stereotypes of male machismo and cruelty in her descriptions of Sykes, parodying the abusive husband both for comedic purposes and as a warning that is realized later in the story. Delia states:
Oh well, whatever goes over the Devil's back, is got to come under his belly. Sometime or ruther, Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing.
In this quote, Delia foreshadows Sykes's comeuppance at the conclusion of the story. Sykes, the abusive husband, literally "reap[s] his sowing" when the snake that he brought into the house causes his death. And as Hurston has provided the caricature of Sykes with no redeemable or sympathetic qualities, the reader is unmoved at his death. Rather than functioning as a fully fleshed-out character, Sykes represents the worst traits that poverty, racial oppression, and economic stagnation can provoke.
