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Chapter 3
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 Crane sits on the train, with “others of her race.” She has a headache, and feels shameful for losing her temper in Dr. Anderson’s office and throwing her job away. She wonders why his piercing eyes unsettled her so much. Helga decides his calm demeanor was controlling and rude. She can’t stop thinking about him, even though it makes no difference now.
Larsen implies out that the train is segregated when she describes Helga sitting with “others of her race.” Helga is so uncomfortable with experiencing romantic attraction that she represses the feeling by convincing herself that Dr. Anderson was rude, even though he wasn’t.
Themes
Helga feels guilty for describing her parents the way she did. Helga’s mother was a passionate, well-bred, fair, Scandinavian girl who simply fell in love and fell into poverty when Helga’s father left her. Helga knows her mother’s second marriage, to a mean white man, was out of necessity. She remembers her mother mediating arguments, and trying to shield Helga from her racist stepfather’s cruel jealousy. Helga recalls her mother’s death, when Helga was 15, and how her Uncle Peter saved Helga by sending her off to a school for black women. It was the first place she could breathe freely in her life, because she realized for the first time that having dark skin didn’t make her repulsive.
The reader learns about Helga’s backstory and her troubled childhood as the only person of color in an all-white and largely hostile family. Helga’s feelings of self-loathing appear to stem from her childhood and abusive step-father’s racist attitude toward her. Even though Helga is half white, she feels out of place in her family setting for her dark skin, which makes her hate herself. Larsen implies that in a segregated society, people with good intentions—like Helga’s mother—are often forced into oppressive situations.
Themes
Helga was happy at this school, even though she felt like an outsider. Over time, this feeling grew when she realized the other girls had families, but she didn’t. It bred discontentment in her, and she was happy for a change when she got the job at Naxos. Helga recalls how she broke up with James Vayle, calmly and quickly, and how he felt cheated by the discussion, as if she were hiding something. Helga realizes now that she never could have married him. When she thinks of him touching her, she feels nauseous.
Helga’s backstory reveals that she has been bouncing back and forth between predominantly white and predominantly black environments in a segregated society her whole life, and that she’s always felt like an outsider of some sort. Helga’s lack of feelings for James Vayle shows that she tends to commit to people she’s not attracted to, while running away from people she is attracted to—perhaps because she believes she doesn’t deserve to be happy.
Themes
The train car is buzzing with activity. A white man walks through and spits on the floor. Helga tries to get a berth but the conductors refuse her. After a shift change, the new conductor offers to let Helga have a berth if she’ll slip him some money. Helga needs every penny she has, but she pays him anyway. As Helga undresses and lays down in the berth, her mind is preoccupied with Dr. Anderson. She wonders why she lost her temper instead of talking honestly about her family. She’s sure he would have sympathized with her. Helga feels like she talked in angry half-truths. Now, as she drifts off to sleep, she thinks about the phrase “angry-half,” repeating it to herself.
Helga’s difficulty at getting a berth on the train reflects the systemic oppression faced by people of color in a segregated U.S. In this era, only white people could have berths, while people of color had to travel in a crowded separate carriage. The phrase “angry-half” captures Helga’s frustration as a mixed-race person in this society: she feels too white for predominantly black environments, yet is perceived as too black for predominantly white environments. One half of her, therefore, is put out wherever she goes.
Themes
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