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Chapter 24
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
During Helga’s recovery, she has a long time to think. She feels angry, and thinks she ruined her life. She decides that religion is a tool that oppresses “the poor and the blacks.” They put so much faith in heavenly rewards that they put up with terrible poverty. The nurse sees Helga fretting and tells her to sleep, saying she needs to regain her strength. Helga agrees. She needs to regain her strength to get out of here. If she doesn’t, she’ll suffocate from self-loathing. Familiar feeling of dissatisfaction, restlessness, and shame reappear as Helga decides she has to escape from the “degradation” that her life has become.
Larsen reinforces her criticism of religion, arguing that belief in rewards after death cannot make up for the unacceptable poverty in which many people of color live in America society. Helga realizes she has repressed her true feelings, hiding this time, behind faith, and once again her self-loathing and racial shame bubble to the surface. Larsen shows that Helga wants to make one final attempt to escape the “tragic” fate of the “tragic mulatta” trope.
Themes
Helga realizes she hates the Reverend and her life, and has to escape or she’ll die. She feels bad about leaving the children, but knows that they’ll at least be among people like them. Helga realizes she must sleep, and regain her strength. Then she’ll figure out a plan. But just as Helga starts to feel strong enough to leave her bed, she starts giving birth yet again.
Helga’s attempt to escape the fate of the “tragic mulatta” ends in failure. Larsen concludes the story by showing that even though slavery has ended, the myriad of ways in which people of color are still oppressed—including segregation, belief in white superiority, exoticizing blackness, and religious life—can still ultimately break them, just as they break Helga.
Themes
