To Hell with Dying

The story’s first-person narrative allows the reader to access the narrator’s thoughts and emotions, evoking a greater sense of trust and empathy for the characters. The narrator, both as a child and an adult, recounts the relationship with her family friend, Mr. Sweet, someone with an alcohol addiction and who has bouts of depression that her child-self identifies as “deaths.” The narrator never discloses his “deaths” as depressive episodes, maintaining a sense of childlike mystery and mysticism. The narrator’s tone when retelling the Mr. Sweet’s history speaks to a love that extends outside of blood relations to expand kinship and strengthen community. The centrality of Mr. Sweet in the story challenges archetypical relationships between adults and children, emphasizing The Purity of Love in Youth. Despite Mr. Sweet’s drunkenness, the community loved him and on the numerous occasions he was in “death room” would collectivize to “revive” him.

The opening paragraphs describe Mr. Sweet’s struggles in life, such as living on a “neglected cotton farm” (Paragraph 1), succumbing to work as a fisherman, and his obligation to marry Mrs. Mary and raise a son he doubted was biologically his. Framing the central character in this way is also a narrative on the historical and political context at the time, whereby segregation in America’s South had prevented Black people from accessing the same opportunities as the white population. This is further emphasized when the narrator returns home to see Mr. Sweet and explains that she is studying for her doctorate in Massachusetts, an opportunity Mr. Sweet was unable to be given because he is Black. While this demonstrates progression, it also stresses the importance of community, as she leaves her dissertation to return to Mr. Sweet instantly once she heard he “was dying again” (Paragraph 16).

The narrator only describes the physical and emotional state of Mr. Sweet, in comparison to her mother, father, and brother, who are not given descriptors. They are more distantly interpreted by the narrator, demonstrating the importance of Mr. Sweet and the closeness they share that allows her to describe him so intimately. The narrator describes Mr. Sweet as having “long and sort of straggly” moustache (Paragraph 2), “thick kinky hair” (Paragraph 3), and “blueish” and “squinty” eyes, which help convey his age and unintimidating presence. This imagery provided through the lens of a child juxtaposes the melancholia he suffers when talking of his past.

Mr. Sweet exhibits an ability to be soft and affectionate toward the narrator, shown through stroking her hair and being vulnerable during his “rehabilitation,” where he cries without feelings of embarrassment. This inherently critiques general notions of masculinity. In contrast, the narrator’s father is a flat character who, while generally kind, displays an abruptness toward women demonstrated by him pushing aside Mr. Sweet’s wife in the narrator’s first revival.

The narrator does not comment on her relationship with her parents, but the characters and their relationships nonetheless demonstrate how Gender Roles and Emotional Labor in Families and dynamics between different generations limit the possibility of emotional bonds between adults and children. The physical affection of love through tickling and kissing is not expressed with the narrator’s father, brother, or mother; meanwhile, the narrator perceives this laughter and affection to be a force that can revive Mr. Sweet from “death.” This alludes to the narrator’s deep desire for emotional and physical affection and connection to others in her community. However, the reality Mr. Sweet lives is not addressed by the narrator, in that the “deaths” of Mr. Sweet are episodes of depression. The melancholia starts when he has been drinking alcohol and singing the blues, though when he is drunk and “feelin’ good,” the children are able to play with him. In these moods, he does not show traits of supposed seriousness and cautiousness that the narrator finds in other adults.

Despite not being explicitly stated, there is an air of spirituality in the revivals. The episodes of Mr. Sweet’s “deaths” can be translated into depressive episodes, alluded to when the narrator states, “He would start to cry and that was an indication he was about to die again” (Paragraph 6). However, her innocence and lack of experience with death evokes a sense of mysticism wrapped in naivety. When she is seven, the doctor says “that the children should not see the face of implacable death” (Paragraph 9), and she protests, convinced that Mr. Sweet was not implacable despite not knowing the significance of the word. The father then pushes the doctor out the way to demonstrate to the children that death is not relentless, and she is able to revive him. The mysticism of innocence and mortality is broken when Mr. Sweet finally passes, but the narrator’s inheritance of the guitar symbolizes the remaining presence of his spirit, which continues to impact the narrator.

Importantly, it is not only her childish belief that exhibits a spiritual faith, but also the implicit emotional connections in the community, as they all gather together to observe these revivals. The attendance of neighbors and relatives to Mr. Sweet’s “death room,” as it’s called, suggests a tight-knit neighborhood that supports each other, even if they don’t all have the same bond or perform the emotional labor that the narrator does. Despite being drunk when playing with the children, the narrator’s mother does not mind him playing with them and “did not hold his drunkenness against him” (Paragraph 4). The community’s love of Mr. Sweet despite his drunkenness and episodes of depression speaks to a broader theme of a community that cares beyond the boundaries of nuclear family.

Finally, the intergenerational impact of slavery and segregation is partially healed through the narrator. Mr. Sweet was unable to pursue his ambitions because he was a Black man in the segregation-era South, and his life refined to an abandoned cotton farm symbolizes the inescapable effects of slavery on his generation and Black people as a whole. However, the narrator, who lived through the civil rights movement, is able to pursue the dreams that Mr. Sweet had, escaping the slavery-era setting and developing her own identity. Still, she returns to inherit Mr. Sweet’s guitar, showing that she’ll continue to carry the memory of him with her.