Many moods are represented in Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. The respective authors not only describe states of mind that are familiar to us, such as Delia's sense of desperation in Sweat, but also mental attitudes that test our perception. This is especially true in The Things They Carried, which focuses on the emotional detachment of soldiers during war. In both stories, we see how a single but sudden change in the characters' environments alters their scruples and emotional evolution. Both stories rely heavily on the character's internal frustration, as Delia struggles to understand Sykes' cruelty towards her while Cross tries to deal with his unrequited affection for Martha. Both Hurston and O'Brien focus more on a symbolic representation of the characters' mental development rather than a series of extreme confrontations between characters. From the beginning of both texts, we are immediately immersed in the mentality of their respective characters. Delia is immediately described as “crouching on the kitchen floor… humming a song in a sad key” (Hurston, 353). This setting also reflects her mental position, Sykes's slave, their relationship, the shadow of their fleeting marital happiness, has ultimately "become the struggle for autonomy" (Lupton, 46). His determination to continue working conveys that he initially unconsciously bends to Sykes. Despite the physical and mental torment he inflicts on her, she would rather “resume her work and not answer him” (354) to maintain a dignified attitude, to maintain their relationship. His state of mind seems tormented, as he silently tries to discover where his relationship went wrong. N...... middle of paper ......possible aspect of humanity to be the cause of the most immense changes in the characters' lives. Bibliography: Hurston, Zora Neale, and Cheryl A. Wall. Sweat. Rutgers University Press, 1997.O'Brien, Tim. The things they carried. Harcourt: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.Chen, Tia. “Unveiling the Deeper Meaning”: Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” ". Contemporary Literature. 39. 1 (1998). Gelfant, Blanche H. (ed.); Graver, Lawrence (assistant editor). 'The African American Short Story' from the Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001Hupton, Mary Jane. “Zora Neale Hurston and the Survival of the Female” from Southern Literary Journal, no, 1982)..