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Chapter 23
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 goes into labor for the fourth time on a hot Sunday morning. A few difficult days later, she gives birth to her fourth child. She’s so exhausted that she barely acknowledges the child and remains listless for a week. Everyone worries about Helga, but she blocks them out, retreating into the calm, quiet darkness of her broken mind. Memories from her life float by and she thinks of her mother and Robert Anderson, painfully realizing how deeply she loved Robert. She thinks of the lovely, selfish Anne, the conceited Axel, the calm Audrey Denney who just lived her life the way she wanted, the smug James Vayle, the kind Mrs. Hayes-Rore, and the social-climbing Herr Dahl and Fru Dahl.
Helga’s life comes crashing down with the birth of her fourth child, which finally breaks her. Helga finally realizes that she has repressed her emotions her life and ruined her chance of happiness with Robert Anderson because she was too afraid to embrace her feelings. Helga’s memories of other people juxtapose Audrey Denney’s happy life with Helga’s tormented one. Audrey Denney embraces interracial life throughout the story, rather than trying to fit into one race or another. Larsen thus implies that interracial communities are better than segregated ones.
Themes
When Helga comes to, she feels the Reverend’s “moist” hand on hers, and pulls away, repelled. The veneer of faith has worn off and the luster of her current life has completely faded. Helga is completely disillusioned, and decides that God has never helped black people, who only suffer. She weeps for the painful lives her children will have, and sinks into sleep. When Helga awakens, she’s told that her fourth child didn’t survive. She tries to hide her relief.
Helga’s weeping shows that although slavery has ended in the U.S., life in American society for people of color is far from emancipated. Larsen makes her criticism of religion explicit, arguing that it is often used as a tool to oppress people of color and make them accept suffering instead of fighting for better living conditions.
Themes
