Down the hole she goes! A Response to Quicksand

The novel Quicksand depicts the life of Helga Crane and her search to find herself and happiness. On her journey she finds and looses so many things. I think Helga was this dynamic character who changed only for the worst. The novel begins with her thinking about her current life and how unhappy she is. She then ponders on what happiness she is searching for. The author says, "But what did she want? Barrring a desire for material security, gracious ways of living, a profusion of lovely clothes, and a goodly share of envious admiration, Helga Crane didn't know, couldn't tell. But there was, she knew , something else. happiness, she supposed. Whatever that might be. What, exactly, she wondered, was happiness. Very positively she wanted it. Yet her conception of it had no tangibility. She couldn't define it, isolate it, and contemplate it as she could some other abstract things. Hatred, for instance. Or kindness." I think this entire quotation in the second chapter summarizes her entire journey and her quest to find her life. 

Personally, I did not like Quicksand only because it had such an awful ending. However, I do think that Quicksand was the most humanizing novel I have ever read. We are all on our quest to find love and how to live. We all are trying to find out was really makes us happy. With that being said, we must know how to bounce back from situations that bring us down, and not let our pride and ego stand in the way. For the most par in the novel, Helga let her pride, ego, and excuses stand in the way. Also, I think the novel depicted how life really is. In addition, I think Helga's character reminds me a lot of me. She thought a lot and would make "excuses" of why things are not the way they should be. I think we all do that. Helga's journey ended with her not putting her two halves to make a whole. She had everything she needed when she first started her journey, and she had experienced everything she needed to experience along the way, however she never put the two together so it made her a weaker person. For example, Helga started off as a very strong and somewhat individual who greatly desired to have a family. In the end she did have a family, but she lost her strength. Also another example would be her race. Although she was half black and half white she never got a chance to be with her white side of the family so with that, she never knew the other half of who she was.Also with the men she were engaged to she began to get worse and worse as the story progresses. When she was first engaged to James she knew exactly what she wanted, however in the end she had given up so much that she forgot what she wanted in a man.  Also, I find it so ironic that Larson wrote Passing along with Quicksand,  because I think Helga sort of passed her way through society within the novel. She would be whomever her environment desired her to be. However, the only exception would be the first part of novel. I think she was her strongest when she was a teacher at Naxos, and after that everything started to slowly go farther and farther downhill. Ultimately, I do not think that Helga reached any happiness towards the end of the novel. Although, she may have said she was happy in actuality she was not happy at all. 

Overall, I think the novel was written very well, however it was a very difficult read at moments. The author used a wide range of vocabulary within the novel and some moments were a little difficult to understand, however I do think it was a great read. I also think it contributed a lot to the class.