Symbolism of Dana's Arm
For my blog post I wanted to focus on a moment in Kindred that really stuck with me through its many ways of symbolism. Dana losing her arm at the end of the book left a powerful and unsettling impression and I was curious about it’s ties to a broader understanding of the effects of trauma. Octavia Butler uses this physical loss to show the marks of history that can't simply be ignored or shaken off. Dana returns to her own time, but she doesn’t return completely untouched by her experience. The violence of the past has fused with her and has manifested itself into an injury. It shows a deeper meaning that Dana’s emotional and psychological scars that slavery leaves an impression, even generations later.
Dana’s arm being trapped in the wall of her home also symbolizes the connection she has between past and present. She is pulled (metaphorically and quite literally) between two worlds, and her arm is cut off at the exact point when those two worlds collide. I think this is trying to explain how modern America is still tied and intertwined with its history of slavery. This moment connects to Butler’s message that you can't separate yourself from the past easily- especially not something as horrific as that.
My last idea about the symbolism of Dana’s arm is that her arm acts as a reminder that resolutions don’t come easy. Instead of Dana returning to her life normally, Butler uses her as a reminder that understanding history requires discomfort and confrontation with trauma. Dana’s missing arm symbolizes that survival doesn’t always mean coming out of it whole. Traumatic events in history come with immense weight, and Butler ensures that the weight sticks with the reader long after the story ends.
Hi Alyssa! I never thought of the scene with her final return and the arm as a metaphor for slavery's legacy into the present. That is a really interesting thought. Thinking about the opening scene of the book, the aftermath of the event, we still see Dana in a powerless situation and having to pretend much similar to her time in a slave state in the 19th century. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa!! I enjoyed reading your blog. I completely agree with you that things from the past can still stick with people in the present. I think that Butler represents this through Dana losing her arm. She'll never forget what she experienced when she traveled to the 1800s. I really liked how you chose to dive deeper into what the arm represents because when I read that part in the novel, to me it felt like sort of something that happened out of the blue. Nice Job!!
ReplyDeleteHey Alyssa, I love your emphasis on the weight trauma (and especially slavery) can have, even after the experience is over. The connection you make with Dana's personal experiences and how she's affected is very good. I thought it was extremely interesting how you paralleled her experiences to America's experiences in slavery and how we are still affected by it today, which was an incredibly interesting and true connection to make. Amazing job!
ReplyDeleteHi Allyssa, this post really captures what we talked about in class and develops it out. The fact that Dana seems almost trapped between two worlds is an idea I never picked up on. Her arm might even been left in the past with Rufus instead of in the wall like I originally though, there certainly isn't mention of having to dig a bleeding arm out of the wall and filling the whole afterwards.
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa! This was a really interesting post, I think you fo a really great job representing how trauma can stick with people and how Butler illustrates that through Dana's arm. When I first read that scene, I thought it was a very abrupt ending and I was a little bit confused by it, but I think you do a good job of explaining the importance of that as a part of the ending.
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa!!! The idea that her arm connects to the idea that racism is still in the present day is super interesting and I agree with that take. When she time travels back, aside from her struggling to back to life normally, there isn't exactly a clear representation of what she went through. The physical nature of her losing her arm, however, achieves this, and it sort of shows that the effects of racism will never truly go away, at least for a very long time; they're still present, just less obvious than before. Great post!!
ReplyDeleteAmong many other aspects, the arm being "held back" by Rufus's dying grasp also plays into the history/fiction distinction. From the start of the narrative, Dana's ability to be physically injured in the past is "proof" that it is not a dream or hallucination--this history is real, and it is invisibly *present* in the world Dana and Kevin inhabit, and we have a potent metaphor for history that won't "die" or "stay in the past." But the arm takes it to another level--a permanent disfigurement. This is emphatically no "dream," and likewise it's impossible for Dana to treat it as "just a story" about the past, fictional or not. It is a real, lived-experience aspect of her actual LIFE--she sweats and bleeds and spends days, hours, weeks, and months in the past, aging the whole time. In various ways, Butler refuses to let us off the hook about this disturbing stuff that is ostensibly "in the past." I love the quote from Butler that Crossley provides in the Epilogue: "antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole."
ReplyDeleteAlyssa! I think the use of physical representations as pain is really lasting in novels. We often hear about historical events where there is suffering, but the amount of impact is often difficult to comprehend. With this visual representation, we have a physical understanding of the lasting trauma that slavery leaves on people. It is not some vague mental struggle, but real pain and lasting impacts. Since we often aren't able to see the racism that exists today in the form of housing issues, school choice, or other systemic impacts, a lot of people argue that they do not exist. I'm so happy you brought up this part, I thought it was super interesting!
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