Quicksand By Nella Larsen Analysis

Nella Larsen’s novella Quicksand tells the story of a woman named Helga Crane who is dealing with not belonging in neither white nor black society. The title Quicksand fits this story because it shows how Helga has been trapped her entire life by the discontent she feels as a person of mixed race.
Helga Crane is the daughter of a white Danish woman and a black man. Her father abandoned Helga and her mother when Helga was young. The abandonment thrusts the mother and daughter into what Helga described as “poverty, sordidness, and dissipation” (21) in a Chicago slum. Helga’s mother then married a white man in order to provide for herself and Helga. In this new white household Helga had to deal with unkindness from stepbrothers, stepsisters, and …show more content…
Before being sent to this school, Helga could only experience life in white society. She was stuck in a repression which could be called quicksand because the white society was engulfing Helga with no way of her getting out. Helga was not thought as an equal in the white society, but she also had no way of experiencing life in the black society which she also belonged to. Her predicament changed when she was sent to the Negro school. The school should have been a way out of the quicksand of white society and should have allowed for Helga to flourish in her new black society.
However, because of the race crazed time that Helga lives in she is unable to escape the fact that she is both white and black. She cannot exist as both races and the feeling of having to choose a race continues to follow her; remaining the quicksand she is stuck in. An instance of Helga feeling the confliction is seen in the opening of the novella. Helga is a school teacher at a prestigious Negro school called Naxos. She is seemingly happy at the school; she has a fiancé, friends, and a lot of possessions which makes her room nice (1). Helga is fitting into

Show More

Related Documents: Quicksand By Nella Larsen Analysis

Essay about Black People and Conditions Decoding Essentialism