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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Quicksand, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Segregation, and Society
Mixed-Race Identity
Racial Shame and Emotional Repression
Race, Beauty, and Exoticism
Religion, Poverty, and Oppression
Summary
Analysis
Helga wakes up feeling stressed. She remembers that she decided to leave Naxos, and she still feels the same way. Helga wants to leave right now, but there’s a lot to sort out: paperwork, James Vayle, money, and a new job. It makes more sense to wait a few months until the end of the school year. She knows this is the sensible thing to do, but she feels a sense of rebellious urgency. Helga always feels as if she’s up against some powerful enemy that she has to prove herself to, even though this way of thinking gets in her way a lot. She wonders what she really wants. Obviously, there’s financial security, lovely clothes, and the adoration of others. But more than this, she wants happiness, if only she knew what that meant.
Helga’s sense of rebellious urgency results from feeling out of place as a mixed-race person, wherever she is. Her need to prove herself stems from her feelings of personal shame. Helga wants to leave the place she’s in when feelings of displacement and shame arise in her, as she thinks a change of scenery will make these feelings go away. Helga would rather push her feelings away than face them, and this tendency clouds her judgement: she wants to leave even though it’s not sensible to quit in the middle of the school year without a backup plan.
Themes
The breakfast bell rings, and Helga hears Miss MacGooden, the dormitory matron, yelling at the students for being raised with no manners, and acting like “savages from the backwoods.” Helga wonders if Miss MacGooden realizes this is kind of insulting to the girls in the dorm who are, in fact, mostly from the backwoods. Through her window, Helga watches students scrambling to get to class. Margaret Creighton cautiously knocks on the door to see if Helga’s alright, as Helga is going to be late for her first class. Helga defiantly asserts that she’s not going to class at all. In that moment, she realizes that Naxos disgusts her, and wants to get out as soon as possible. She even tells Margaret that the school should be shut down.
Miss MacGooden, like the white preacher, betrays an undercurrent of racism in her comments. She implies that people of color from poor rural communities (the “backwoods”) are “savages.” By assuming that people of color are raised without manners or culture, Miss MacGooden exposes her belief that white culture is superior. Helga thinks the school should be shut down because she believes that young people of color won’t become empowered in environments where they are constantly belittled.
Themes
Margaret worries for Helga, as she thinks it’ll be hard to find work in the middle of the school year. Margaret wishes Helga would stay, as she likes her. She reminds Helga that Naxos offers good work with a high salary and nice job perks. Helga is unmoved. She’s enlivened by the thought of leaving, and her mind is already thinking about packing and trains, and her journey to Chicago.
Margaret’s worries about Helga’s job prospects foreshadow what Helga will encounter in Chicago: a lack of employment opportunities for educated people of color. Helga is so eager to run from her loathsome feelings about Naxos that she doesn’t think about such matters—she would rather run away than be pragmatic.
Themes
