Quicksand centers on the live of an African American women, Helga Crane and her place in society. She searches for a community in which she feels at home; her journey takes her from the Southern United States, to Harlem, and to Denmark-- where her white relatives live. In each setting Helga negotiates her place in society facing the challenges of being both a biracial person and a woman. Every location, however, forces Helga to confront the stereotypes that confine her. Ultimately, Helga enters a loveless marriage of convenience and returns to the South. Unable to express her individuality, Helga is resigned to live a life that denies her the autonomy she has struggled for. This novel was praised by Larsen’s contemporaries and held as exemplary
Throughout Thomas King’s novel, Green Grass Running Water, King uses a variety of Indigenous characters to accurately portray Indigenous Peoples and the stereotypes that define them in the eyes of the public. The quote above reveals more information about Eli as a character; he is a university literature professor with a Ph.D. in the subject, the books on notable literary figures indicate he is passionate on the subject, and despite all his achievements, he is only seen as an Indian. Earlier in the novel, Norma stated that Eli wanted to be a white man, and this passage reveals why and how Eli was a white man according to her. However, Eli’s character is ironic as him wanting to be white and leave his Indigenous background behind only resulted
In Cold Sassy GA, the town is filled with gossip surrounding the town’s newest newlyweds. Will Tweedy finds himself eyewitness to it all. Grandpa E Rucker Blakeslee has ‘tied the knot’ with the young milliner, Miss Love Simpson. With it being only three weeks after the death of his last wife, the family and town alike are shocked. Confused but curious about it all, Will observes what it means to be husband and wife and what it really means to love. Puzzled by the secrets shared between the two, he tries to figure out just why Grandpa Blakeslee asked Miss Love for her hand in marriage and why she even agreed. While Grandpa Blakeslee is experiencing his second adolescence, Will is trying to make it through his first. When Will gets hit by a train and is still alive to tell about it, Grandpa Blakeslee gives him a lesson on God’s Will. And Will starts to realize not everyone interprets things the same way. When the mill child, Lightfoot crosses Will’s path his heart skips a beat. With all Will’s new found attractions and desires he decided to try his luck with the girls. That’s when he experiences his first kiss, and also his first heartbreak. After the innocent Uncle Camp kill’s himself due to Aunt Loma’s constant criticism, Will starts to question how he treats people. He starts to wonder if maybe he helped his uncle pull the trigger. Soon after that Grandpa Blakeslee’s store isn’t doing all that well. Two unidentified strangers come and rob Grandpa Blakeslee blind, in the process beating him up ‘something awful’. With his weakness effecting his immune system, he catches a bad case of pneumonia and soon passes away. But not before Miss Love could tell him what he had been waiting to hear his whole life…. He would soon have a son to carry on the family name. Not at all scared of death or the unknown, Grandpa Blakeslee orders a letter to be read concerning his funeral and remains. But to everyone’s surprise he orders the cheapest and lowest class funeral and orders himself nothing, but a wooden box. Wanting no one to mourn over him and everyone to know that he was dead...
The film “A League of Their Own,” depicts a fictionalized tale of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. This league was started during World War II when many of the Major Leagues Biggest stars were drafted to the war. MLB owners decided to start this league with hopes of making money while the men were overseas fighting. Traditional stereotypes of women in sports were already in force before the league even begins. One of the scouts letts Dottie, one of the films main characters she is the perfect combination of looks as well as talent. The scout even rejects one potential player because she is not as pretty as the league is looking for even though she is a great baseball player. The player, Marla’s father said if she was a boy she would be playing for the Yankee’s. Eventually Mara’s father is able to convince the scout to take Marla to try outs because he raised her on his own after her mother died. Her father says it is his fault his daughter is a tomboy. In this case the film reinforces the traditional stereotype that mothers are in charge of raising their daughters and teaching them to be a lady, where fathers are incapable of raising girls to be anything other than a tomboy. The focus on beauty also reinforces the traditional stereotype that men will only be interested in women’s sports when the females participating in
Nella Larsen’s “Quicksand” depicts a young woman who lives her life around her dyer need to find her place in society. In the setting of Quicksand, discrimination is a key factor in the text because Helga Crane, who is a biracial woman, is expected to settle in a race in which she does not necessarily call her own. With this said, Crane maintains her status as an outsider in both the white and black community, and is never content with her surroundings. She also disregards her peer’s philosophies on life as annoying or absurd. She is constantly looking for a “better” life that will bring her self-fulfillment, but to her misfortune she never finds it. In the text Quicksand, Helga Crane shows great dissatisfaction with her life because of the racial barriers she has set for herself psychologically. She has formed these barriers in her life to keep distance from facing racial discrimination and conformity. Crane fights to keep differentiation between herself and the rest of society, and makes a life choice to not repeat the same mistakes as her given mother. While trying to find her own happiness, Helga Crane looks towards her materialistic views which prove to dissatisfy her in every situation.
The character of Helga Crane from the novel Quicksand by Nella Larsen is a very complex character, struggling with racial identity, social class and sexism. Helga Crane is a twenty-three year old schoolteacher that comes from a mixed racial background. Her birth mother was a Danish woman, while her birth father was of West African descent. In the novel, she is depicted as a very exotic, beautiful and intelligent looking woman. Her racial dilemma however has left her lonely, alienated and psychologically uncertain to her belonging in the world. While growing up, due to her significant dark-skin and European features she was ostracized by both the Caucasian and African American community. In order to find herself a place in the world, and feel at home she traveled from the South, to cities such as Chicago, Harlem and even the European city of Copenhagen in Denmark. When it came to her travels, everywhere she would go she stated a strong opinion on her belonging. With that being said, I would like to focus this paper on three passages regarding her life at Naxos, in Harlem, and in Copenhagen.
... Americans during the post-war period. While the working class Younger family makes the move from the inner city to the suburbs, it is without the encouragement from any other working or middle class African American characters in the play. The experience of the Youngers characterizes the class conflict felt by many African Americans during the suburban migration.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- This essay will compare the ways in which the novels "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath and "Quicksand" by Nella Larsen deal with relationships, paying particular attention to how this aids the characterisation of Esther Greenwood and Helga Crane, the central characters respectively. It will explore their relationships with other characters in the novel, especially how the authors use relationships to fulfil their writing aims. It will also discuss the relationship between the protagonist and the reader, and how successfully this is achieved through the novel's language. Finally, it will attempt to compare the ways in which they relate to the world around them, which is particularly fascinating as although both novels could pass as fiction, they are largely autobiographical, raising the question of why the author's chose to tell their own life stories in this relatively detached way.
The book tells the story of the dreams of a young black American woman who has the beauty and characteristics of a young Caucasian woman. It starts when the young woman is a young girl and grows up under the care of his grandmother. The young girl now grows up to become a young woman. All through the stages of her growth, the young woman, Janie, has several dreams in her life. Janie is later married off to a rich young man by her grandmother. After a while, the two break up and she runs away with another young man who becomes her second husband. The book then takes a turn in the twist of events when it stops from just being dreams and it becomes reality. Janie now realizes the reality of the situation. In the book, the author has used several metaphors to tell the story.
Janie who continually finds her being defined by other people rather than by herself never feels loved, either by her parents or by anybody else. Her mother abandoned her shortly after giving birth to her. All she had was her grandmother, Nanny, who protected and looked after her when she was a child. But that was it. She was even unaware that she is black until, at age six, she saw a photograph of herself. Her Nanny who was enslaved most of her lifetime only told her that a woman can only be happy when she marries someone who can provide wealth, property, and security to his wife. Nanny knew nothing about love since she never experienced it. She regarded that matter as unnecessary for her as well as for Janie. And for that reason, when Janie was about to enter her womanhood in searching for that love, Nanny forced her to marry Mr. Logan Killicks, a much older man that can offer Janie the protection and security, plus a sixty-acre potato farm. Although Janie in her heart never approves what her Nanny forced her to do, she did it anyway. She convinced herself that by the time she became Mrs. Killick, she would get that love, which turned out to be wrong.
The first encounter with Helga Crane, Nella Larsen’s protagonist in the novel Quicksand, introduces the heroine unwinding after a day of work in a dimly lit room. She is alone. And while no one else is present in the room, Helga is accompanied by her own thoughts, feelings, and her worrisome perceptions of the world around her. Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that most of Helga’s concerns revolve around two issues- race and sex. Even though there are many human character antagonists that play a significant role in the novel and in the story of Helga Crane, such as her friends, coworkers, relatives, and ultimately even her own children, her race and her sexuality become Helga’s biggest challenges. These two taxing antagonists appear throughout the novel in many subtle forms. It becomes obvious that racial confusion and sexual repression are a substantial source of Helga’s apprehensions and eventually lead to her tragic demise.
Nella Larsen wrote Helga to be ahead of her time. She’s a fiercely materialistic and intelligent woman of bi-racial ethnicity in a time that did not allow for bending of social norms and roles. Because of these strict societal barriers and her own self-doubt and internal struggle, Helga continually lets herself drown in the quicksand that is her isolationist feelings and life.
First of all her grandfather dies, which leaves her as an orphan. She byes a ticket to Connecticut, where the last of her relatives live. When she arrives she is hit with a new way of life. In Barbados, slaves did the work, so Kit never worked before. She comes dressed in a Silk dress, which at that time was unacceptable in Connecticut. When she arrives at her relative's house, she is amazed how small in was compared to the house she lived in on Barbados.
Helga feels most out of place when she has to confront the eroticism of the clubs in Harlem and her disassociation from sexuality. For example, Helga realizes how the music moves her in the club, “… the music died, she dragged herself back to the present with a conscious effort; and shameful certainty that not only had she been in the jungle, but she had enjoyed it…” (Larsen, 59). Helga also feels social disconnection from Anne Grey who’s hypocritical of the culture she participates in. Anne Grey makes her hypocrisy clear when she says, “That’s what’s the matter with the Negro race. They won’t stick together. She certainly ought to be ostracized”, while at the same time participating in white society and even enjoying the music and other cultural products (Larsen, 61). Due to Helga’s alternative views to that of the Harlem and New York City society she leaves for Denmark where instead of feeling appreciated she’s fetishized and put on display like a freak show. Helga realizes she’s being made into an eroticized version of herself when Herr Olsen says, “…You have the warm impulsive nature of Africa, but, my lovely, you have, I fear, the soul of a prostitute. You sell yourself to the highest bidder, I should of course be happy that it is I…” (Larsen, 87). For this and other reasons, Helga leaves Denmark and moves back to New York City but this is not her final
Larsen was not one to abide by the rules, stemming right from her childhood when she was expelled from one school for not abiding by the dress code that was set out in the schools rules. Larsen also addressed taboo issues within her novels such as sex and race. Larsen uses the character of Helga to convey her own feelings on her early life and the society that surrounded her. “What, then, is the nature of the quicksand into which Helga Crane sinks in Nella Larsen’s novel? Critics have offered various answers. Hiroko Sato writes ‘The title, Quicksand, signifies the heroine Helga Crane’s sexual desire, which was hidden beneath her beautiful and intelligent surface and came up at an unexpected moment and trapped her.” (Johnson, 1998:
The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.