Deception and Death in a Relationship

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Nadeshda Clayton Professor Delgado ENG 201 103 25th June 2012 Deception and Death in a Relationship Often times the level of love in a relationship can be measured on an unbalanced scale. A man can say he’s in love and act as if he is in love just for his personal gain. This act of deception can make a relationship unhealthy. Abuse, neglect, and infidelity can be a deadly factor in such a relationship. Some men experience relationships where deceptive love can lead to death. Your actions can say more about you than a single word. Zora Neale Hurston introduces a character by the name of Sykes in her short story “Sweat”; at first read Hurston’s audience would question how someone so devilish could gain the love and trust of a wholesome Christian woman. “There’s plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint of sugar-cane. It’s round juicy an’ sweet when dey gits it. But dey squeeze an’ grind, squeeze an’ grind an’ wring tell dey wring every drop uh pleasure dat’s in ‘em out. When dey’s satisfied dat dey is wrung dry dey treats ‘em jes lak dey do a cane-chew. Dey throws em away.” Sykes at some point had to of been a sweet, loving, and charming man in order to get a second glance from his wife. Readers can assume that despite Sykes ugly behavior throughout the stories, there was a beautiful courtship between him and his significant other that she and others could have presumed as ‘love’. Margaret Atwood’s approach on an artificial love in “Happy Endings” was similar to Hurston’s. In story B of this short story Atwood states that “He [John] comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you’ll notice that he doesn’t even consider her worth the price of a dinner out, and after he’s eaten the dinner he fucks her and after that he falls asleep…” John’s mistreatment of his lover is appalling but he didn’t ‘catch the bee with vinegar’.

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