30 pages • 1 hour read
Alice WalkerTo Hell with Dying
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Mr. Sweet’s Guitar
The guitar is a symbol for Mr. Sweet’s creative soul; it embodies his history and identity. The guitar is referenced in scenarios where Mr. Sweet is sharing his story or expressing his emotions through his “sweet, sad, wonderful songs” (Paragraph 7), which fall within the genre of the blues music. This genre was developed largely within the African American community and reflected many of their struggles in the United States at the time. Originating in the southern US, blues songs centered around religion and work. Mr. Sweet liked to play “Sweet Georgia Brown,” a song about a devastatingly beautiful woman that likely relates to how he sees his past love. The inclusion of the type of music references cultural staples of Black culture at the time, but it also alludes to how he is limited by his identity as a Black man. His inability to pursue his ambitions due to his race is partially what inspires his guitar playing in the first place.
The guitar is a tool with which Mr. Sweet communicated his feelings to the community, and sometimes he would cry, though this seems to only occur around the children. This suggests that the guitar is a gateway to his soul, devoid of socially constructed barriers of age and gender. When Mr. Sweet plays the guitar, the neighbors and family would hear him play, emphasizing the significance of both the blues genre and an appreciation of the tradition of oral history to the community. Leaving the guitar to the narrator as an adult shows how those experiences shaped her adulthood and represents the act of passing stories—and trauma, in some cases—down through generations. This is emphasized by her living in the North and being a doctorate student. Her life path opposes Mr. Sweet’s own, yet she is connected to him and the community through the guitar. The narrator continues Mr. Sweet’s story, embracing the work Mr. Sweet was never able to do without abandoning her roots.
Mr. Sweet’s Home
Mr. Sweet’s home is briefly described several times, and it is a significant element of his character. Described as a “neglected cotton farm” (Paragraph 2), it alludes to the legacy of slavery Mr. Sweet is entrapped in. The home is isolated and incredibly run-down, and it weathers further as he ages and his health deteriorates, making it another representation of Mr. Sweet. In the beginning of the story, the narrator describes the house amid one of her early revivals as “a very poor shack really” (Paragraph 9), and upon her next and final return to visit Mr. Sweet, describes the house as “more dilapidated than when I was last there, barely a shack” (Paragraph 16). He is bound to his circumstances because of his race, unable to pursue his interests or aspirations, and so he is figuratively and literally forced to spend his life in circumstances created by slavery.
However, when the narrator returns from college, she notes that “overgrown yellow roses” bloom outside the shack (Paragraph 17). The flowers that surround the house evoke feelings of life, growth, or happiness, despite the morbidity of the scene, and they symbolize the narrator and her impact on Mr. Sweet’s life. Though he’s never able to leave his circumstances and escape the confines of the segregation-era South, the joy she brought into his life stays with and outlasts him, even when she leaves to pursue the ambitions he couldn’t. The importance of the flowers is given more gravity when the guitar is handed over. The narrator comments on the “fragrant delicate scent of tender yellow roses” (Paragraph 22), suggesting that the love between them lives on.
Mr. Sweet’s Hair and Wrinkles
Throughout the story, the narrator uses Mr. Sweet’s facial features, such as hair and wrinkles, to help explain her feelings of comfort and love toward him. Many adults would negatively view the wrinkles because they are a sign of age, but the children “loved his wrinkles and would draw some on [their] brows to be like him” (Paragraph 5). This highlights the innocence found in youth, and sets up these physical features as symbols representing the children’s desires to be like Mr. Sweet. Just like wrinkles or hair, Mr. Sweet could be viewed in a negative light by adults, but the children choose to value him for his positive attributes anyway, referring back to the theme of The Purity of Love in Youth.
Mr. Sweet’s “white hair” was the narrator’s “special treasure,” and her gradual remarks on how it goes white keeps his aging at the forefront of the story. With each mention of his hair and wrinkles, Mr. Sweet’s well-being diminishes and he is closer to death. A loss of innocence occurs in the narrator’s young adulthood when she sees her elderly parents—who each also have graying hair—and the dying Mr. Sweet; his endearing signs of aging are now indicators of his impending death.
Importantly, the narrator expressing a direct and significant affection for Mr. Sweet’s skin and hair relates to race as well. While she doesn’t talk about his skin color, it is still part of his physical appearance that has limited him in life. She calls his hair “thick,” “kinky,” and “impenetrable”—descriptors meant to indicate the specific curl type of a Black man’s hair. By communicating her love of these things, to the point that she and her brother wish to look like him, she is showing an earnest appreciation for Mr. Sweet’s common physical traits, which mirror her own. It is a subtle representation of Black pride.
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By Alice Walker
