Mudbound

“When I think of the farm, I think of mud. Limning my husband's fingernails and encrusting the children's knees and hair. Sucking at my feet like a greedy newborn on the breast. Marching in boot-shaped patched across the plank floors of the house. There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown. When it rained, as it often did, the yard turned into a thick gumbo, with the house floating in it like a soggy cracker.” 

In the beginning of the novel, as Laura looks back on the events at the farm, it appears that she has no good memories of it. The reader will learn that this is not true, because her time on the farm leads to her meeting Jamie, a baby, and discoveries about herself. But her primary memory is of the mud that isolated her and her family, and which invaded her life when Henry moved them to 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 Now that he—she believes—has withdrawn his attention during his two-month absence—she sees that she was never content.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.