We know Dana loses her arm at some point in Kindred from the prologue when the injury is explained. It turns out, she does not lose her arm until her return to the present for the final time. Forever removed from the slave era in which she spent years protecting her great-grandfather Rufus, so he would be alive until the conception of Dana's grandmother, Hagar. If Rufus were to die, Dana could never have existed.
Although scientifically, the reason she lost her arm seems to be that it got sort of cut off by the wall in which her arm was split by upon return to 1976. However, I don't think that is a good reason why her arm was lost. There is something symbolic about it and how after spending years in the 1800s living as a slave in the south, part of her had to stay in the past. She couldn't have all those experiences, learn all those new things, meet all these new people, live the slave era, without paying a sort of price. Although Dana saved Rufus and kept him alive until Hagar was born and she could be born, she ended up killing him. Even though Rufus was rude and awful to Dana and other slaves over and over, I think his intentions were not bad, he was just the product of a bad environment. Dana, coming from an environment in which the behavior shown by Rufus was appalled, was understandably taken aback. I still think that the fact that Dana killed Rufus the first time he bothered her after Hagar was born was a little bit selfish. Although he was essentially about to rape her, he wasn't being violent, and the thought even crossed her mind that she could sleep with him and it wouldn't be that bad. But suddenly, seemingly on impulse, she decides that she would never sleep with him and he is being awful, so he kills him. Did he really deserve to die, considering he was not acting irrational in the era in which he lived in and the occupation in which he worked? I don't think he did. I don't think it was fair for Dana to kill Rufus soon after Hagar was born. The fact that she did showed that for all this time he was keeping Rufus alive solely for her own purposes so she could be born and, although it seemed like she did, didn't have any deep connection to Rufus.
When Dana returned to 1976 for the last time, her arm was cut off in the exact place where Rufus was grabbing her when she traveled back to the present. I think this is symbolic to the degree in which Rufus relied on her. She almost became an extension to him, saving him when he needed it, and trying to knock sense into him when he needed it. After he was shot by her, he clung to her so hard because he needed her more than ever at that time when he was near death. He clung to her so hard that he kept part of her in the 1800s with him.
I think it came up in fifth period discussion, but not in your section, but the wall can fit into this symbolic-oriented reading as well: just as the severed arm (at the point where Rufus attempts to hold her down and hold her back) represents something about the continued "hold" these experiences will have on her, the wall might be seen to represent the presumably clean and total separation between the antebellum era and the present. One effect of this novel is that this border starts to seem more permeable--there is no clearly defined "wall" between past and present, in other words. Part of her makes it back, part of her does not.
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