Quicksand shows Helga’s as a figure of a Mulatto with a constant conflict between ideas of black and white identity.

Nella Larsen deals Helga's ethnic identity crisis across the sand. She commented on the life of Murat women who wanted to find their strict black southern school. Since the beginning of the novel, Larsen used Helga as a "tragic hybrid" to clarify the view of the black people. The tragic Murat is a stereotypical idea, and someone is doomed to wander between black and white. Helga said it is impossible to complete the task within a sufficient amount of time to judge whether she is black or white.

Quicksand emphasizes the story of a semi-black-and-white woman named Helga Crane. Throughout the story, Helga tries to find something that makes her happy and satisfying despite the hatred face from her white stepfather. Autobiography of 'pre-colored people' is a fictitious story about young mixed blood. This man is known as the former color man, and lives in the post-reconstruction era of the United States. This guy needs to choose whether to maintain a black identity or to live like a middle class white man.

The running sand began with Naxos, "This country, the best black school in the north and south". In fact, according to the hero's heliga clan, Naxos is much better than white people in most schools. Naxos is based on the famous Alabama Taski Skiing Institute and was founded by Educator Booker T. Washington in 1881. Although no date is stated in the novels, it can be considered that the time frame is in the early 20th century, based on the reference of the Harlem Renaissance movement later in the novel.

"Helga Crane was sitting alone in her room at 8 o'clock in those evenings." These opening lines told Nella Larsen's first novel "Rainbow" (1928) 's plot and features . The main character Helga Crane is a lonely, lonely woman, life is certainly weakened. Herga is a mixed race, mother is white, father is black. Helga's father gave up his wife and daughter, Helga's mother soon married a white man. Helga now has a white stepfamily. Helga with a dark skin was raised by white and black people and dismissed, surviving in a lonely childhood and continuing to ask acceptance only for adults wherever she goes.

Likewise, in Nizza of Nila Larsen, Herga (actress heroine) constrains her sexuality and the lack of her sex is an explanation of the white stereotype of black female sexual behavior. In addition, her emotional, sexual desire leaves the Danish racist, America, at the expense of her. So she brings unrecognizable sexuality to the pleasure of consumer purchasing and introducing ourselves. In Denmark, Helga refuses Axel Olsen's proposal that her resistance to distorted images projected on black women is primitive and brutal, bloody. And exoticism - this power leads to Helga's refusal and her own desire self-understanding, and the rejection of Helga's proposal opposed Axel's depiction of her portrait.