Daily Archives: March 13, 2014

Quicksand: The other side of the fence

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In Quicksand by Nella Larsen, Helga Crane is the protagonist who seems dissatisfied with her surroundings. Helga’s character development throughout the story happens within her thoughts and actions. For example, in the beginning, Helga begins her work teaching at Naxos. At first she is optimistic about the young minds filled with aspirations, but then thinks that the school institution itself beats this out of them, to quote specifically: “Helga Crane had taught in Naxos for almost two years, at first with keen joy and zest of those immature people who have dreamed dreams of doing good to their fellow men. But gradually this zest was blotted out, giving place to a deep hatred for the trivial hypocrisies and careless cruelties which were, unintentionally perhaps, a part of the Naxos policy of uplift” (11). In understand Helga, I get the sense that she is someone who battles with the desires of her heart and the realities of real life. She questions the differences her friendship would make to the students and compares it to the size of an atom. She also struggles with the notion that money holds her back, and although she struggles to be free and express the actions her mind seems to scream for, everything isn’t as simple to make happen for herself. Helga seems to struggle with the desires she has in her mind and the oppression that seems to surround her regarding race. Helga fumes over the sermon of the preacher who urges that black people of Naxos were superior because they knew to stay in their place, and to go further than that would lead them only to corruption. Although the preacher seems to at times praise the students, Helga understands the message behind the preachers sermon, This infuriates her and she imagines the creativeness and individuality that would be able to be expressed but aren’t, comparing the school to a “machine”.Here Helga again is faced with the fact that her true wishes and desires fall dead on the reality of the situation, and when it finally hits her, she can no longer stand it and devises a plan to free herself from Naxos.

 

Banal

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Banal – Adjective

  • Devoid of freshness or originality. Hackneyed, trite.

Found in: Quicksand by Nella Larsen

“…the hundreds of students and teachers had been herded into the sun-baked chapel to listen to the banal, the patronizing, and even the insulting remarks of one of the renowned white preachers of the state.”

This passage shows that Helga starts to feel more disdain toward the school. The preacher started to talk about how the school is great for “Negroes” and that others should know their place like they do in that town. Helga hated the things the preacher said to the school.

Rough Draft 1

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Gender discrimination refers to “the practice whereby one sex is given preferential treatment over the others. The practice of giving social importance to the biological differences between men and women is there everywhere. In some societies, these differences are very much pronounced while in others, they are given less importance. If I were to write about this issue in a bold way I might go for the smaller things that people do not really notice.
The first being; we have yet to have a woman president. 49 other countries in the world have. Yet America has not, granted we are currently experiencing our first black president so I am sure one is coming in the future. Why is it hard for us to vote a woman president? Why has only one run so far that has had a decent chance of wining? What if we look at the opposite of this?
Women get things sometimes at a free or cheaper price then men do simply because they are female. Is this because men see them as objects? Lets look at clubs for an example; these places are known for letting females in for free rather than males. More then often I have gone to house parties and been denied because there are to many males in there already or I don’t have any girls with in my group. But they will let in 5 girls at a time and still deny me. They claim they have to maintain the right guy/girl ratio. I have clearly seen girls use this to their advantage of this though. Whose fault is this; the media for portraying women as objects and not people? Men for only viewing women as objects and not people? Or perhaps it’s the women themselves for not doing anything to change this image. I think it is the media’s fault.