1) Quicksand
2) By: Nella Larsen
“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.”
3) In this passage, I believe Helga was going through many emotions and feelings at this very moment. Helga first went into Naxos with the ambition and determination to help teach and motivate the younger generation but did not accomplish anything she had originally set out to do. She had finally felt like a complete failure, that there was no point of her existence anymore. Helga was completely disappointed in herself and even felt that she was not fit for teaching anymore. All the joy and life in her personality was entirely gone, like a person left with no soul. She no longer had the ambition or want to teach anymore, especially in Naxos. Helga felt that the excellent community and school she was thought she was teaching at was no longer a school. She felt like the life had died out everything as well as her own self. The school and community had basically become a machine with no individualism or innovations left.
4) I believe this passage has a lot to do with the theme of the book, because I feel like this was the start of Helga’s want and need to her moving out of that area. I believe this is where she began to start doing her own soul searching trying to find herself. I think Helga was confused and wasn’t sure of what she wanted to do with herself anymore which led to her moving to many different locations with the same outcome and no further progress.
This passage really does help us to understand how Helga’s character is being shaped. This is where she starts questioning her teaching, her belonging and her acceptance in Naxos. She even questioned her career in teaching. Her thoughts about her environment were also changing. She felt she was a failure and she felt ready to leave and start over in a place where she thought there were no injustice, lies and hypocrisy. She felt to urge to run away and find her own identity but not in Naxos. We can see how her character kept developing later in the story as she moved from one place to another but this is one of the passages that really shows how her character had changed and she felt disconnected from her environment and from within herself.