Mudbound (33 page)
Authors: Hillary Jordan
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Social Science, #Discrimination & Race Relations
4. The story is narrated by two farmers, two wives and mothers, and two soldiers. Compare and contrast the ways in which these parallel characters, black and white, view and experience the world.
5. What is the significance of the title? In what ways are each of the characters bound—by the land, by circumstance, by tradition, by the law, by their own limitations? How much of this binding is inescapable and how much is self-imposed? Which characters are most successful in freeing themselves from what binds them?
6. All the characters are products of their time and place, and instances of racism in the book run from Pappy’s outright bigotry to Laura’s more subtle prejudice. Would Laura have thought of herself as racist, and if not, why not? How do the racial views of Laura, Jamie, Henry, and Pappy affect your sympathy for them?
7. The novel deals with many thorny issues: racism, sexual politics, infidelity, war. The characters weigh in on these issues, but what about the author? Does she have a discernable perspective, and if so, how does she convey it?
8. We know very early in the book that something terrible is going to befall Ronsel. How does this sense of inevitability affect the story? Jamie makes Ronsel responsible for his own
fate, saying, “Maybe that’s cowardly of me, making Ronsel’s the trigger finger.” Is it just cowardice, or is there some truth to what Jamie says? Where would you place the turning point for Ronsel? Who else is complicit in what happens to him, and why?
9. In reflecting on some of the more difficult moral choices made by the characters—Laura’s decision to sleep with Jamie, Ronsel’s decision to abandon Resl and return to America, Jamie’s choice during the lynching scene, Florence’s and Jamie’s separate decisions to murder Pappy—what would you have done in those same situations? Is it even possible to know? Are there some moral positions that are absolute, or should we take into account things like time and place when making Judgments?
10. Why do you think the author chose to have Ronsel address you, the reader, directly at the end of the book? Do you believe he overcomes the formidable obstacles facing him and finds “something like happiness”? If so, why doesn’t the author just say so explicitly? Would a less ambiguous ending have been more or less satisfying?
Hillary Jordan grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. She received her BA in English and political science from Wellesley College and spent fifteen years working as an advertising copywriter before starting to write fiction. She got her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Her first novel,
Mudbound
, won the 2006
Bellwether Prize for Fiction
, awarded biennially to a debut novel that addresses issues of social justice, and was the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year for 2008. Jordan’s short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including
StoryQuarterly
and the
Carolina Quarterly.
She lives in Tivoli, New York.
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