Summer work is always a pain in the butt. It’s something that gets pushed off because no one wants to be doing school work during the summer time. Once I started reading this book it no longer felt like summer work. I was reading it because I wanted to know why Pappy was killed. I wanted to find out what was going to happen to Ronsel. I told my dad I felt like I was watching a Soap Opera. There was constantly drama every time I turned the page. That’s what made it the book so interesting to read. There was never really a dull moment. Hillary Jordan does a good job catching the reader’s attention and then keeping it.

The thing that stuck out to me the most as I read this book was the tone that Hillary has each of her characters portray. The book doesn’t just have one tone. It changes every chapter depending on whose perspective we are reading from. Having all the different characters have a different tone allowed the book to paint the story better than it could have with just one perspective. Just one perspective would have made the book boring and well one dimensional. I mean imagine the whole book written from Henry’s perpespecive. We would have read a lot about his farm and the issue’s he was having with his planting. Instead Hillary made the book six dimensional.

Hillary Jordan opens the book writing from Jamie’s perspective. She then ends the book with Ronsel. These two characters have the most in common. The biggest thing different about them is that Ronsel is black and Jamie is white. When reading their chapters they both have the same feel. Although I liked Ronsel better. Ronsel is just a better person than Jamie. I agree with Flournce on the fact that Jamie was trouble. Jamie ruined Ronsel and he knows he did it. Yet, the two of them made a good pair because they understood eachothers problems. When reading these two characters perspective you got the same tone. They both wanted to leave Mudbound and go off and do more things with their lives. I think Hillary’s decision to open and close with Jamie and Ronsel was an interesting way to set the tone. The tone they set opening and closing the book makes Mudbound sound like a place that you would want to leave. That it was a place you got stuck like the mud.

Now every story needs to have two people who are more positive than the rest. I think in Mudbound those two characters are Henry and Hap. The tone that both of these men have in their chapters are trying to make things better. Make the best of the situation they have while making a plan to make it how the want it. Henry wants to live his dream of living on a farm and having a family as best as possible. He knows that his wife wants to live off of the farm and so the whole book he works hard to get them a house just off of the farm. Hap wants to be a farmer who owns his own land. He knows that he has to just keep working hard with what he’s got and that in time he will be able to get what he wants. These two characters are the only tone’s in the book that are both hard working honest men who just try to do everything right.

Now Laura, oh was it so obvious that she and Jamie were going to hook up. Laura’s tone through the whole book was just lonely and sad. She missed how she and Henry were before Mudbound and couldn’t seem to find peace till the very end of the book. I feel bad for her and how depressing her life got, but at the same time her part of the story made the book very interesting. It put into perspective just how life was in Mississippi after World War 2.

The character that I respected most was Flourence. She was the best perspective to read from because she just said it how it was. No one could put anything past her. Her tone was a tough cookie who would do whatever she could to protect her family. She is the mother bear of all mother bears.