Dana's arm

In class we discussed a lot about what the loss of Dana's arm meant for the story. When I thought about how she lost her arm, it reminded me most of when Isaac lost his ears. Isaac was a slave who was trying to escape, and when he got caught his punishment was the loss of his ears. Dana's predicament is similar. She finds herself unwittingly accepting her role as a slave, and this makes her almost as much of a slave as any of the others on the plantation. When she tries to escape this slavery by killing Rufus, it results in the loss of her arm. 

At the end of the book Dana has become a slave to Rufus, and this is why her freedom takes her arm in return. Dana has no control over her life anymore. It is completely dictated by Rufus and his control over the time travel. She submits to the expectations for her at the time, and understandably so because she has to in order to survive, but this still means that she is forced into a kind of temporary slavery. The only way she could escape was through killing Rufus, the one who had control over her. 


This makes the fact that it was Rufus' grip that decided the fate of her arm even more significant. Even to the end, Rufus had control over her life and left a mark that would forever tie her to her past.