Book Analysis: The Quicksand By Nella Larsen

As I read Nella Larsen’s book the Quicksand, I was intrigued by her character of Helga Crane and everything she experienced in the book. There are several references back to what was going on for a young woman who was a bi-racial child, not just black or white. Also as I read the book, I was struck by the psychological undertone of this book. Helga Crane, not only had to deal with trying to figure out where she fits in society, but also seemed to be slightly unstable and that affected how she looked at the world around her. The book starts off showing Helga Crane as a teacher at Naxos school in the South. She started out talking about how she enjoyed reading at night to forget about her day at the school and the students. She recalls
Her mother being white was looked down upon by many in the black community which caused Helga to feel the need to hide the fact. When her mother married her step-father and had a white child, had caused Helga to be ostracized by her step-father and step-siblings due to Helga being part black. It was when Helga was 15 and her mother passed away, that her uncle sent for her and sent her to a black school, in which Helga finally felt at peace for a while. Helga still felt that she was an outcast even then, because she didn’t have a family like the rest of the students. She felt isolation and discontent even as a teenager, which cause her to start to show signs of depression even as a
She is fighting to find acceptance where she can, whether that be in Naxos, Chicago, New York City and Harlem, Copenhagen, or even in Alabama. I see her suffering from dysthymia which is a functional level of depression, but she is border line to having a form of bipolar disorder. She has times where she feels great, as she comes down from those highs, she feels mad and anxious, most of the time due to someone judging her for some reason. She always finds a reason to become angry and this brings her down into a low in which she wants to find a way to become happy again. I see that when she has this religious vision and marries the reverend that she is in a high mood and then she comes down from that and this causes her to have a form of psychosis begin by the ending of the