"These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destructions."
In Harlem, Helga is challenged by African-American culture. They seem to embrace their heritage in theory, but they simultaneously reject, in theory, the parts of her heritage which Helga loves most. She sees them as imposters, claiming to accept their heritage yet craftily emulating their white neighbors. Eventually her own prejudice drives Helga out of Harlem.
"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."
Growing up emotionally neglected, Helga has lived her entire life in a state of cortisol-induced panic, more or less. Her world is shaped by fear and survival, yet she hears people talk about fulfillment and peace, even happiness. When her circumstances slow down a bit, she sets her sights on discovering what happiness means and how to find it.
"Incited. That was it, the guiding principle of her life in Copenhagen. She was incited to make an impression, a voluptuous impression. She was incited to inflame attention and admiration. She was dressed for it, subtly schooled for it. And after a little while she gave herself up wholly to the fascinating business of being seen, gaped at, desired."
In Denmark, Helga is eager to embrace life on her own terms. She gets a high satisfaction from commanding people's attention, especially men. She doesn't mean anything serious by it, but she's vying for the emotional attention which she was denied as a child, without knowing it. Only know Helga has resources of seduction, money, and education to help her cause.
"Faith was really quite easy. One had only to yield. To ask no questions. The more weary, the more weak, she became, the easier it was. Her religion was to her a kind of protective coloring, shielding her from the cruel light of an unbearable reality."
Helga finds religion in her most desperate moment, after living on the streets in Harlem. In these pious people that make up the church, she recognizes an easy acceptance of "the way things are." She allows other people to look out for her finally, and relinquishes a great deal of the control with which she's insulated herself all these years. There is a surrender, even if she's leaning into the people more than what they believe.
"Well, what of it? If sex isn't a joke, what is it?"
Clare has adopted an attitude of lightness. She rejects the sacred in life, the same way she rejects her ethnic heritage in order to pass as white. When Irene learns that Clare was sleeping with Brian, she is horrified but not surprised. This is Clare's attitude; everything's a game to be won.
"The trouble with Clare was not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well."
Irene doesn't attribute Clare's lack of real friends to her passing but rather to her selfishness. She observes of Clare reaches out to take advantage of whatever situation she can. People sense that about Clare, and it's unsettling.
