In Quicksand, Helga Crane who is a 23 year old teacher in school in Naxos, Georgia, is born of a white mother and black father. Deeply lonely as a child, she has not been able to identify herself as either white or black. Helga then leaves Naxos and move to Chicago because she is tired of the racial politics of the school. She announces her resignation to the school’s principal, Dr. Anderson, to whom she becomes attracted to later in the reading. She breaks her engagement to a teacher named James Vayle, and leaves Naxos feeling relieved.

In Chicago, her mother’s brother Uncle Peter has a new wife, who rejects Helga due to her mixed race. Helga, alone and broke, finds work with an educated and wealthy woman named Mrs. Hayes-Rore, who asks Helga to edit her speeches on racial equality. After taking the job, Helga decides that she will relocate to New York and start a new life. Helga feels empowered by her decision and feels as if she had been “reborn”. She has a need to be in control of her own destiny and to feel like she is in control of the situations she finds herself in. Freedom was happiness for Helga and in Harlem she had a place to live, a stable job and good friends where she felt free.   But it didn’t last, this happiness of Helga Crane’s. We can see this change in the following passage.

“Little by little the signs of spring appeared, but strangely the enchantment of the season, so enthusiastically, so lavishly greeted by the gay dwellers of Harlem, filled her only with restlessness.  Somewhere, within her, in a deep recess, crouched discontent. She began to lose confidence in the fullness of her life, the glow began to fade from her conception of it. As the days multiplied, her need of something, something vaguely familiar, but which she could not put a name to and hold for definite examination, become almost intolerable. She went through moments of overwhelming anguish. She felt shut in, trapped. (390).”

By reading the above passage we can see how “old” Helga resurfaced and she was plaqued with feelings of doubt, insecurity and alienation. Where once felt connected to the heart of Harlem, Helga soon became disconnected. After receiving a note from her Uncle Peter urging her to reconnect with her Aunt Katrina who “always wanted” her in Denmark, Helga begins to look at Harlem differently. She says that “She didn’t, in spite of her racial markings, belong to these dark segregated people. She was different. She felt it. It wasn’t merely a matter of color. It was something broader, deeper, that made folk kin. (395). Then she felt free once again.

I also want to include that the epigram at the beginning of the novel by Langston Hughes seems like an appropriate introduction to Helga’s struggle to find her place in the world where she is questioning her own identity and her connections to the community around her.

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At the beginning of the novel Quicksand by Nella Larsen starts with a sentence that would anticipate both the plot and characterization of the novel. The protagonist Helga Crane two year old, an unhappy teacher. Helga a mixed race, her mother was white and her father was black. It seems as a child she was a very lonely person. She has not been able to identify herself as either white or black. Helga is a teacher at Naxos, a wealthy boarding school in the South that educates black children. Helga becomes extremely frustrated with the school’s segregationist race politics.

“… if all Negroes would only take a leaf out of the book of Naxos and conduct themselves in the manner of the Naxos products there would be no race problem, because Naxos Negroes knew what was expected of them. They had good sense and they had good taste. They knew enough to stay in their places, and that, said the preacher, showed good taste. He spoke of his great admiration for the Negro race, no other race in so short a time had made so much progress, but he had urgently besought them to know when and where to stop.” (p. 5-6 )  The white minister tells them that if all black people knew their place like the black people on Naxos, there would be no problems.  This is an example of how judgmental the whites were against the blacks.  Helga is upset and vows to leave Naxos. This shows Helga’s frustration towards the school of segregationist race politics.

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In the novel Quicksand by Nella Larsen, the main character is Helga Crane. She is a 23 year-old teacher at a well renowned school in the south for black people. Helga had been teaching there for about 2 years. She had been slowly growing weary of that school, but at this point she reached her limit. The story opened with her desire for silence and solitude, because that day had been horrendous for her. Helga had to sit through a prideful speech made by a white preacher, who made offensive remarks toward black people. This was her breaking point, as seen in this passage, “Sitting there in her room, long hours after, Helga again felt a surge of hot anger and seething resentment. And again it subsided in amazement at the memory of the consider-able applause which had greeted the speaker just before he had asked his God’s blessing upon them. The South. Naxos. Negro education. Suddenly she hated them all.” (6-7)

After hearing those insulting remarks the preacher made to the black students and faculty of Naxos, everyone else applauded. Their acceptance of his words angered Helga greatly. She decided after sitting all night and thinking in her room that she would leave Naxos as soon as possible. She went into the school thinking that this school was a great opportunity for the black race and she wanted to be a part of it. Finally, however, she realized that this school brings no advancement to her race, and may even be oppressing them further. After realizing that she lacks money to travel and the timing is not beneficial to her career, she starts thinking of putting off the departure until the end of the semester in June. This decision weighs on her because she desperately wants to leave. In the end she decides to speak to the principal at least to notify him about her plans. He succeeded for a short while in coaxing her to stay and be a part of the cause to change the school for the better. This lasted a short while, for in the end she told him that she would leave that same afternoon. Helga was in a battle of heart and mind, desire and reason.  She wished to flee but was caught up in realistic obstacles. In the end she made up her mind to go along with her desires.

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