Returning to the present for good

Last week we had a bit of a long discussion about Kevin and Dana's final journeys to the present and how they are left scared from their travels and experience. Dana, looses an arm after it materializes into the wall and both Dana and Kevin are left with mental scars from their extended times in the south and long separation from both each other and their time period. However, we are left questioning for what reason Butler decides to take Dana's arm away.

The way I see it, there are several possible explanations, the concept I most agree with is the idea that Rufus has taken part of Dana away, leaving his own mark on her. As she has taken away his life, he takes away a part of her by clinging to her until the end, forcing her to remember her murderous act that she performed. This murderous act that seemingly had to occur. With this explanation I am left wondering why Dana is materialized into the wall instead of her arm staying with Rufus. We are told that her arm goes into the wall at the exact point at where Rufus was holding her. So why have her arm go into the wall why not just leave it in the past instead of materializing into the wall and having the imagery of her violently yanking her arm in two? I also question why Dana's arm needs to serve as a reminder? Was her life spent in Maryland not already burned into her memory in a way she will never forget? Dana already is covered in scars from her brutal whippings by Tom Weylin, is this severing of the arm Rufus's own way of leaving his mark on Dana, a much more prominent and memorable one at that. While I highly doubt it is just a plot device is it possible that the materialization into the wall at the beginning of the novel was a good graphic manner to draw the reader in and to foreshadow some type of time travel in the early pages of the book before Dana goes back in time. Even with this possibility I feel that it was necessary to take something away from Dana in her final exchange with Rufus so this conclusion wouldn't entirely make sense. The murder of Rufus is something Dana seems reluctant to commit, but fate forces her; Dana doesn't have a choice, Rufus has overstepped his bounds and Dana must end his life based on her own principles even if she may not really want to see him dead as she definitely holds some lingering connection to Rufus as evil as may seem at times.

I think it would have made an interesting sequel story if instead of forcibly yanking her arm and tearing her arm's connection to the wall as painfully as possible, she found some way to cut around her arm, remove it from the wall and become some type of time traveling wall armed super hero. Butler is a sci-fi writer, I can't imagine why she would have ignored this possible conclusion when she wrote the ending and set up a great sequel. (It must be getting late if I'm writing something this dumb at the end of my blog post.)