In the story Quicksand by Nella Larsen, The protagonist Helga is facing a bunch of issues she never thought she’d have to deal with. She is a twenty-two year old woman that is half black and white. She teaches at Naxos, one of the finest schools for Negroes anywhere in the country. She went in with the intentions of all confidence and joyous thinking Naxos was a community of innovation and individualism but soon came to find out that it was the exact opposite. I believe this is where her character starts to develop. As written in the passage “Helga’s essentially likable and charming personality was smudged out. She had felt this for a long time. Now she faced with determination that other truth which she had refused to formulate in her thoughts, the fact that she was utterly unfitted for teaching, even for mere existence, in Naxos.” (365) She begins to feel like a failure since all of her ideas and teaching methods were constantly being rejected. Helga felt like Naxos was turned into a machine that had students and teachers abiding by the “White” way of how they thought things should be. She began to lose all interest and even hope in teaching anymore. She was slowly loosing it inside by feeling so defeated and disappointed and thought it was time to leave. Helga was so overwhelmed with everything going on she even thought that picking teaching as a career was the wrong choice. Her dreams of going into an all Negro top charted school to help teach and motivate other young beings soon came crashing down. She went into Naxos not accomplishing anything she had set out to do which killed her. I believe Helga did make the right choice by leaving because she was dealing with a lot of interracial and self-acceptance issues that had no good outcome. I’m also anxious to see how the rest of her character develops.

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