Mudbound

“The truth isn't so simple. Death may be inevitable, but love is not. Love, you have to choose.” 

Laura contemplates what will happen during the story and wonders whether it was predestined. She compares herself and the other characters to pieces in a board game. She believes that what transpires is the result of the choices that she, Jamie, Ronsel, Henry, and Pappy make. She chooses to act on her love for Jamie, and to act on Henry’s love for her. 

“This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness, scantily clad in rage. It had been there all along.” 

Until Henry began courting her, Laura thought that she had been content. Now that he—she believes—has withdrawn his attention during his two-month absence—she sees that she was never content. She is furious that she is undesirable to men and also that she cannot feel complete without one. If he had not shown interest in her, she could have lived in relative peace in solitude. 

“Cleave has a second meaning, which is ‘to divide with a blow, as with an axe’” 

After marrying Henry, Laura settles into the routine of her life as a wife. She calls this the beginning of her time of cleaving, as defined in the Bible. But by the time the novel ends she pays more attention to the alternative meaning of cleave, which means to divide. By cleaving to Henry without insisting on her own needs, divisions arise between them.

“When the river takes me I don't try to swim or stay afloat. I open my eyes and my mouth and let the water fill me up. I feel my lungs spasm but there's no pain, and I stop being afraid. The current carries me along. I'm flotsam, and I understand that flotsam is all I've ever been.” 

Jamie dreams of being washed away in a flood. Each time in the dream, Henry saves him, yet the dream shows him that he is insignificant. He is merely an object to be swept along by various tides, always depending on someone else to fulfill him or rescue him. That Jamie believes this to be true is one of the reasons he does not see the point in aspiring to a life of responsibility: He does not believe his existence can or will have meaning because he sees himself as something that is acted upon. 

“You got to go along to get along.” 

When Ronsel joins the Army, he is surprised to see how badly he and the other black soldiers are treated by their white counterparts, even though they are all sacrificing to serve their country. When Ronsel meets black recruits from the north and west who experience similar surprise, he counsels them to go along with the abuse so that they can get along with their officers and do their duty. This attitude helps him in the war but works against him when he returns to Mississippi. 

“First time in my life I ever felt like a man first and a black man second.” 

When Ronsel arrives in Europe he is shocked to find that the European whites do not treat him as an inferior because of his black skin. The women in the clubs are willing—even eager—to dance with him. In the absence of racism, Ronsel is able to feel like a man, without anyone using his ethnicity as a mitigating or qualifying factor in being with him. 

“Our Laura’s a fighter and she’s going to be just fine.” 

When Laura is young, she contracts Rubella. The doctors do not expect her to live longer than 48 hours. Her father says that Laura is a fighter and that she will survive. On the day she leaves for Greenville with Henry, her father reminds her of the story and tells her that she will be able to survive the move as well. 

“If he had just signed a lease. If he were just a different sort of man. Henry was never good at reading people. He always assumed everybody was just like him; that they said what they meant and would do what they said.” 

After arriving at the farm, Laura is angry with Henry, but she also knows that he is acting according to his nature. Because Henry does not exploit people, he does not assume that anyone will exploit him. His belief that people are generally honest and forthright is what leads to the family having to settle for the farm at Mudbound, but Laura cannot fault him for not being a different kind of person. 

“I believed him. A Negro is like a little child, when he tries to lie it’s stamped on his face plain as day.” 

When Hap shows Henry that the former owner was cheating him on his wages, Henry knows that he is telling the truth. He is determined to do right by Hap, but his description of Hap’s honesty shows how uncharitable and unjustified his perception of blacks is. It is unlikely that he could treat a man he views as being like a little child as an equal. 

“God never gives us a task without giving us the means to see it through.” 

Florence describes the fear and worry that mothers experience when their children are sick or in danger. There is nothing as frightening for a mother as the thought that she might lose a child. But Florence sees this fear as something instilled by God, something that helps a mother focus her energy into doing whatever must be done to fix the child’s problem. Florence’s faith overrides her fear whenever she worries about her own children.

“Henry McAllan was as landsick as any man I ever seen and I seen plenty of em, white and colored both. It's in their eyes, the way they look at the land like a woman they's itching for. White men already got her, they thinking, You mine now, just wait and see what I'm gone do to you. Colored men ain't got her and ain't never gone get her but they dreaming bout her just the same, with every push of that plow and every chop of that hoe. White or colored, none of em got sense enough to see that she the one owns them. She takes their sweat and blood and the sweat and blood of their women and children and when she done took it all she takes their bodies too, churning and churning em up till they one and the same, them and her.” 

Florence describes the mania that can come over men who get obsessed with owning and accumulating land. They treat their land as a possession, even though the land will be there long after they are dead. And the men who obsess over their land—like Henry—fail to see that by making their land the sole factor against which they weigh all their decision, they allow the land to control them. 

“It wasn't personal. The Jerries were the enemy, and while I tried to account for as many as I could, I didn't hate them. Not till the twenty-ninth of April 1945. That was the day we got to Dachau.” 

Ronsel describes his feelings towards the Germans he was required to fight in the war. Until he saw what they had done to the prisoners at Dachau, he felt no person enmity towards them. He fought them because it was his duty. But once he saw the savagery of the concentration camp, he hated them. Killing them became personal. 

“Coon, spade, darky, nigger. Went off to fight for my country and come back to find it hasn’t changed a bit.” 

Ronsel serves his country with distinction in the war. He rises to the rank of sergeant and is the leader of a tank battalion. But his sacrifice, medals, and courage do not mean anything to the white racists in his home country. Now that he has been treated as an equal overseas, Ronsel is unwilling to return to the subservient status Mississippi will demand of him. 

“It wasn't her fault if she seemed less than human, it was the fault of them that did this to her, and them that didn't raise a voice against it.” 

After freeing the prisoners from the concentration camp at Dachau, a starving woman falls onto Ronsel's lap. She dies after he gives her a chocolate bar because her body cannot handle the food. The prisoners do not seem human to Ronsel, but he understands that this is because of what the Nazis had done to them, not because of what they are. This is a contrast to the way the whites in the south view the blacks: They see them as less than human because they believe it is true, not because they have dehumanized them. 

“I loved all my children, but I loved Ronsel the most. If that was a sin I reckoned God would forgive me for it, seeing as how He the one stacked the cards in the first place.” 

Florence cannot hide her favoritism towards Ronsel. She sees her love for him as predestination, and not something she should or could try to change. God gave Ronsel what Florence calls a “shine” elsewhere in the story, and people are drawn to him involuntarily. It is possible that she sees her decision to kill Pappy in the aftermath of Ronsel’s mutilation as an additional act of predestination, given the intensity of her love for him. 

“Jamie didn't talk to me about the war. Most men don't, who've seen real combat. It's the ones who spent their tours well behind the lines who want to tell you all about it, and the ones who never served who want to know.” 

Henry understands that Jamie has been through traumatic experiences in the war, and that he has seen real terror and combat. This is part of the tension between Pappy and Jamie, because Pappy is always mocking him, asking what it is like to be a hero. Henry knows this bothers Jamie, which is why he never tries to talk to him about the war, even though he knows it has damaged his brother.

“I never got falling-down drunk, just maintained a nice steady infusion throughout the day. A lot of it I sweated out. The rest I put to use. I was the designated charmer of the household, the one responsible for keeping everybody else’s spirits up. To play my part I needed booze.” 

Jamie talks about hiding bottles of liquor all over the farm in order to help himself cope. He sees himself as playing a role, officially in charge of charming the others and making them happy. This is not a job that he believes he has the fortitude for unless he is intoxicated, showing the effort that he must put out to be the light, easygoing person everyone seems to think he is. 

“Henry was wholly preoccupied with the farm. I would have gotten more notice from him if I’d grown a tail and started to bray.” 

Earlier, Florence describes Henry as being obsessed with the land. Laura’s perception of Henry is the same, but Henry’s obsession deprives her of attention that she needs. Not only is Henry not meeting her needs, he appears to Laura to be incapable of noticing her in any way, unless she is not meeting one of his standards with regards to her work on the farm. 

“It wasn’t just that he loved her; it was that he loved her, in particular.” 

Laura says that she was never able to give her daughter Isabelle as much attention as she needed, whereas Jamie could. He charms Isabelle to the point where Laura almost believes that she has become his pet, and she understands that his charms worked on her the same way they work on her daughter. Jamie understands that the way to win a person’s affection is to make them the sole focus of his attention while he is with them. 

“There's a whole lot of evil in the world looks pretty on the outside.” (

Florence describes Jamie as a weak vessel. She does not believe he is evil, but everything about him, from his drinking to his womanizing, is weak and contributes to what she calls the Dark Man’s work. Florence believes that the void Jamie tries to fill with his vices was created in him during the war, and when he begins drinking with Ronsel, she fears that his weakness will begin to corrupt her son. 

“I had a few pricks of conscience—seeing Henry's pajama bottoms hanging forlornly from a peg in our bedroom, his comb on the dresser, a stray white hair on his pillow—but real shame and regret were absent. In their place was a riotous sense of wonder. I'd never imagined myself capable of either great boldness or great passion, and the discovery that I had reservoirs of both astounded me.” 

After Laura has sex with Jamie, she expects to feel guilty, but the guilt is rare and insignificant. Jamie has helped her learn that she is a passionate person capable of boldness, and it makes her life with Henry seem even more dull and purposeless than before. But she does not hold this against Henry. She is grateful for the contrast between him and Jamie, because her differing responses to each of them are what fill her with the sense of wonder she describes. 

“Sometimes it's necessary to do wrong. Sometimes it's the only way to make things right. Any God who doesn’t understand that can go fuck Himself.” 

The day after the white men attack Ronsel, Jamie reflects on the Ten Commandments. He focuses on the commandments to not kill and to avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain. However, he knows that the rules of the Bible cannot account for all situations. He kills Pappy because he believes that he failed Ronsel, and he knows that it is the right thing for him to do, even though it is against God’s commandments. 

“What we can't speak, we say in silence.” 

After Jamie kills Pappy, he goes to the barn, where he is found by Laura, and then Florence. He wants to tell Florence that Pappy is dead, and that he did not die peacefully, so that she can know that Pappy did not escape punishment. But like many of the characters in the novel who cannot—or are not allowed—to voice their feelings or opinions or facts, he tries to communicate with her silently, with nothing more than his gaze.