Nella Larsen - Quicksand

Author background: Nella Larsen was born in Chicago to a Danish mother and a black father, and she later lived in New York. She was accused of plagiarism, and she died friendless in New York. She was a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. The novel is and is not autobiographical - some elements match her life story, and others obviously do not.

• Central theme: belonging related to class and race
• Tragic mulatto: she doesn't know her identity, society doesn't know what to do with her, she doesn't know where she belongs; this genre typically ends in depression or suicide; page 51 she describes herself as a "despised mulatto"
• Naxos: Helga is unhappy there because she can't conform, and she can't be happy in her non-conformity; she is threatening to the faculty there because she is different as a half-white woman and she has no family or connections; she gets upset with Anderson when he says she's got good breeding or stock; the name Naxos plays off of "saxon"
• Objects: Helga is more comfortable with objects than people (page 36)
• Great Migration: blacks moved from deep south to industrial north; Helga can't get a job in the north without references because these legitimize Helga's social state
• Harlem: it's perfect, too-good-to-be-true; she is discontented because Anne rages against whites and half of Helga is white
• Audrey: she's the opposite of Helga; she mixes in both crowds, and she knows where she belongs
• Copenhagen: no oppression or racial discussions; the painting of her is primitive, stereotypical, "bad, wicked" (119), and it displaces her identity
• Quicksand: she has her fifth child at the end, and it's like she's stuck in quicksand - the more she struggles, the more she gets stuck; by latching on to Reverend Green, she has been a fool
• the South: Helga misreads important scenes in her life such as the moment when she wanders into the church; implies the theme of everyone being a fool and misreading moments in their lives; she acts in "bad faith" - she ruins her life every day, limits herself with her choices because she makes choices out of fear/denial of her free will (Jean-Paul Sartre)
• Repetition compulsion: abandonment (her father left her, she leaves everything, she can't leave her kids), repeats traumatic event as a way to master that event; America stuck in repetition compulsion in thinking about race
• Helga is constrained to the role of a tragic mulatto so she repeats stuff because she doesn't know what else to do

Ernest Hemingway - Hills Like White Elephants

In this story, it's important to look at what's on the surface level and what's not. Hemingway tends to present a lot of things on the surface level without giving them much context, and this style of writing becomes typical of modernism. The story itself is presented as a fragment, suggesting that modern individuals have fragmented identities. Another way to describe this technique of Hemingway's is the iceberg theory, in which the author presents the tip of the character or 1/8 of the plot.

Another interesting thing to think about in this story is the title. How are white elephants used in the story? There is obviously the adage of an elephant in the room, and the elephant in the room is the woman's abortion which should be "nice." Furthermore, the girl is the first person to see that the hills are like white elephants, which suggests that there is always more than one perspective.

The short story is weirdly feminist, and this is weird primarily because Hemingway was definitely not a feminist. But this story validates women. The girl is genderizes her innocence/ignorance, her naivete, her timidity, her emotion in order to gain autonomy over the man. For example, she shuts down his knowledge by threatening to scream, which plays into that gender stereotype. By shutting down the man, she is able to breakthrough and gain some momentary autonomy.