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April 02, 2007
Kindred
At the end of the novel Kindred, by Octavia Butler, Dana's character loses half of her arm in the wall. This following is a description of how this occurs: "I was back at home--in my own house, in my own time. But I was still caught somehow, joined to the wall as though my arm were growing out of it -or growing into it" (261). I tried and tried and tried to make sense of this and decide what significance it had to the story because it seemed so bizarre. After thinking for a while, I came up with the following.
One possibility that I came up with relates to the fact that back then there were no records of all of the slaves that we meet in the story. Maybe the loss of her arm signifies that her ancestors are a "part" of her. Kevin says that maybe Dana came there so she could "touch solid evidence that those people existed" (264). I feel that part of the importance of the loss of her arm is to suggest that just because there are a lack of records does not mean that you have a lack of ancestors, and what those ancestors went through, in a sense, gave her life. They gave her life everytime they put their own lives in harms way. And since they have the ability to give her life, they also carry the ability to take it away. Rufus needed Dana everytime his life was threatened, and by meddling in this way she gave a part of herself of herself to past. By playing with the art of time travel, the loss of an arm could signify the "power" of the past.
Posted by hlfish at April 2, 2007 11:08 PM