The titular image Quicksand serves as an apt metaphor for approaching this novel. Helga is like quicksand herself, because she is not quite solid and not quite liquid, and her being in the middle of two different ways of life makes for a kind of panic that Quicksand certainly denotes. The threat of a quicksand trap is potentially death, so how does Helga respond to the threat of her dual identity? First, she seeks to understand herself more broadly by travel, and then she tries childbirth.
The travel makes her feel special, because when she goes away from her home to Denmark, she is ogled, but there's a problem: she is being fetishized (and therefore ostracized) by the "normal" white folks. Just like she was not "Black enough" to be truly welcomed by her Black community, here she is not "White enough" to be welcomed as true family. Her dual identity is rejected in both domains, leaving her feeling homeless and frantic.
So she turns to religion and love, seeking the structure of a patriarchal authority structure, but when she finds her new fate is metaphorical slavery in the home and the exhausting work of thanklessly raising children, she feels she has truly begun to sink. The novel ends with the disappointing picture of her sinking into the Quicksand of her identity; because of racism, she was stripped of her chance at a good life, she feels.
