Journal Entry for Coming Home
I didn’t really consult much research for this closing piece. I wanted to bring my move around and return to the same theme I sought to establish with my original moves: the ‘quicksand’ of identity that Helga becomes trapped in by the novella’s conclusion. As such, I wanted to dwell upon these cursory markers of identity (childbirth and marriage for femininity, connection to the South for blackness) that seem to define Helga in the eyes of the Alabama community by the novella’s conclusion. If we read the novella as Helga’s search for a ‘true’ identity as both a woman and mixed-race ethnicity (as I talked about in either my second or third move), then her marriage to the Reverend at the novella’s conclusion is the ‘ideal’ result for her. Through her marriage to a religious figure, Helga becomes ingrained into the very community of the predominantly black town she moves to. As such, she is able to ‘overcome’ her racial confusion by being incorporated into a black community by default. As a preacher’s wife, she is given demanding expectations to be both mother and caregiver. As such, she is provided a specific feminine identity that defines her as a person.
Of course, the issue with such clear identities is that they fail to fully approach whom Helga is as a person. These cursory markers of identity are precisely that, cursory. Such is the ‘quicksand’ of the novella: the quest for identity Helga has pursued. Having finally acquired a social identity that accommodates to her heritage, she finds that she herself is not accustomed to the identity; it fails to permit her to be who she is. In the final move, I wish to present a sense of foreboding of these shallow markers of social expectation that will come to define Helga by the novella’s end. In being reduced to merely a wife and expectant mother, she is effectively reduced from being Helga to simply another member of the community.