Sometimes a Great Notion

Henry’s arm is prominently featured at the beginning of the novel, in the aftermath of the accident that kills Joe Ben and gravely injures Henry, and in the climactic scene of Hank sailing logs downriver to Wakonda Pacific. The arm is severed from Henry’s body as a result of that accident, and so it is irrevocably tied to tragedy. At the same time, the arm, with its middle finger raised, becomes a symbol of the Stampers’ defiance.

A falling tree crushes Henry’s arm, and as Hank helps him out of their truck and into the emergency room, the arm “dropped out of the ragged sleeve to the street like a snake coming out of its skin” (591). The image is gruesome, but also comical in a tragic-farcical way. The absurdity of the situation is compounded: Hank picks the arm up out of the mud and keeps it in his freezer, joking about possibly “fry[ing] it up to go with my breakfast,” and later accidently snapping off a finger “clean as a whistle” (704, 710). Henry himself had already made light of the loss of his arm, joking in the hospital, “I was kinda attached to it!” (632).