Kindred
At the end of Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, Dana is permanently crippled by a touch from Rufus Wainright. While Rufus has hurt Dana before, his grabbing of her arm at the end of the novel is the first time that Dana comes to severe harm as a result of her time travel. She had been concerned about other potential forms of harm, but always either caused by the need for fear-of-death to remove her from the 1800s, or caused by the dizziness associated with her trips into the past. She did have concerns about the possibility of momentum-transfer from being in a car while going back to the past, but, while similar to what happens to her with Rufus, the effect is not entirely the same.
When she returns to 1976, her arm is physically merged into a wall in that time, a wall which obviously did not exist in the 1800s. Unlike the potential for momentum transfer, Dana was not near a wall in a way which could’ve caused the injury. Instead, it is Rufus’ attempt to hold her back, and that alone, which results in her permanent and crippling injury.
Why then, does this occur? For one thing, this permanently changes Dana, in a way where she will never be able to recover. It is fairly clear that this is at least partially an attempt to express the permanent psychological and physiological damage inflicted by slavery on its victims, in an extremely clear-cut form (though Dana is injured on other occasions, and it is clear that she has suffered potentially permanent psychological harm as well).
Dana is very clear-the hand around her arm becomes the wall, which attempts to trap her permanently. Her arm is encased by something non-living, right after her killing of Rufus. As Rufus dies, and Dana is brought back to the present, the thing holding her arm turns from living to not merely dead, but non-living, something which never had life. In some way, this reflects the discovery that the plantation has been wiped from existence in its entirety, and that no one even remembers that it once existed, and was once the site of horrifying actions.
I think there are several ways that you could interpret this scene. One part of it may be Rufus' effects on Dana, and another part may be the slavery era's effects on Dana. The loss of Dana's arm could signify both the permanent damage that Rufus and the slavery era had on Dana. It's interesting because Dana is much more damaged (both psychologically and physiologically) than Kevin. I think this may point to the fact that this experience was inevitably much more personal, and to that degree, much more painful for Dana because her ancestors were involved.
ReplyDeleteWow, I hadn't thought about all these different possibilities at all! I understood why Butler had Dana be permanently physically damaged by her time travel and how it's the effect of fully understanding the painful history of this country, but I hadn't thought too deeply about the fact that it was Rufus' literal hold onto her that caused her to lose her arm. There's a lot of ways to interpret that, but the meaning is clear that the wrongdoings Rufus did towards Dana will forever effect her. I also wonder about the logistics of time travel in the book and how that might play a role - Kevin was able to travel with Dana when he held on to her, but he was from the 1970s too, travelling to the past and back, but when Rufus held on to her when she traveled for the last time, he didn't go with her, but kept the arm behind.
ReplyDelete(The slave-owner's son in the novel is Rufus *Weylin*, not Rufus Wainright, the singer!)
ReplyDeleteI would argue that the loss of Dana's arm is not her first experience with "severe harm" as a result of her trips to the past. She has been whipped multiple times, and will surely have lifelong scars from that. However, the arm is something that forces her to change the way she lives her life. Because all of her actions are going to now be adjusted to accommodate for her lack of a left arm, she will constantly be reminded of Rufus and the slaves, as there is literally no way she can ignore her missing limb as she can temporarily ignore the scar tissue on her back.
ReplyDeleteI kind of feel like the way Dana is injured by her time travel is a bit lackluster, it might have been a bit more impactful had she been injured while in Rufus' time rather than very quickly at the end. It almost seems like a afterthought thrown in to make sure she isn't unharmed by the experience. I understand and like the interpretation you've made in regard to here losing her hand, I just wish it had been done a little differently.
ReplyDeleteIt is a bit cliche, but i think her arm being injured by time travel in the end is a parallel to the mental and emotional damage she suffers throughout the novel. She is changed by her experiences, as we see her struggling with "slave mentality" as she spends time as a slave. The arm is a sign of this as well, where she is permanently harmed in a more physical way too.
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