Helga Crane is an attractive, twenty-two-year-old woman who has taught for two years at Naxos, a southern boarding school for African-American children. Born to a mother of Norwegian descent and a West Indian father who disappeared shortly after her birth, Helga is described as having “skin like yellow satin” and lips described as having a “slight…petulance and a tiny dissatisfied droop” (2). The chapter opens as Helga, who enjoys beautiful things, is sitting in her room with a “blue Chinese carpet …and books” (1) and resting after a day of ungratifying teaching. Dissatisfied with her lot on many levels, Helga reflects that “she gave…unsparingly of herself with no apparent return” as a teacher; she has tried to be a friend to the “happy, singing children, whose charm the school was ready to destroy” (11).

The specific incident upsetting Helga occurred that afternoon, during mandatory Chapel attendance, when the Naxos population heard the “banal, patronizing…insulting remarks of a white preacher of the state” (4-5). The sermon extolled the treatment of the “Negro” at Naxos; and stated that the “good taste” of the Naxos Negroes was demonstrated by the fact that “they knew enough to stay in their places” (5).