Helga Crane's mixed heritage is a major factor in her perception of her identity. Throughout Quicksand, Helga most wants to find a place where she can belong. She is rejected by her White mother's racist relatives and distrusted by the Black activists she tries to befriend once they discover she is mixed race. In Denmark, Helga's skin color and her American identity make her an exotic object, while at Naxos, she struggles against the strict atmosphere and the complacency of the disadvantaged Black students and teachers within its confines. In Harlem, the atmosphere is livelier, but Helga is still put off by the hypocrisy of the Black middle class.

In all of these situations, Helga is an outsider. She hopes to find a place where she can be herself, but the expectations, stereotypes, and assumptions others make about her determines what role she has to play in order to properly fit in anywhere. None of the roles Helga plays can truly be called Helga. Ultimately, Helga's confusion and despair regarding her identity cause her to destroy herself. She marries a preacher, forces herself into a role that contradicts her intelligent, questioning personality as a submissive housewife and mother, and presumably spends the rest of her life in an existential limbo, unable to reconcile her mixed heritage.