Mudbound Case

MUDBOUND

Chapter 3

This whole chapter is Jamie explaining some experiences he had when he was a child. When Jamie was very young, he and his family who were living in Mississippi experienced the Mississippi flood of 1929. He was trapped on the roof of the barn all alone until he saw his brother Henry, who is 20 years older than him, in a boat coming towards him. Jamie stood up to get Henry's attention but as he stood up he fell into the rushing river until his brother quickly came to his rescue and pulled him to safety. His experience with the Mississippi flood ignited a fear of water for Jamie where he would go weeks on without a bath just to avoid water. The chapter opens as him having a dream he often encountered throughout his childhood. In this dream, similar to his real life experience, Jamie is straddling the barn roof and as the river is flowing towards him, so are household objects. This dream is suddenly turned into a game. As he sits perched on the rooftop and objects flow towards him, he has to guess whether the object will flow downstream to the right of the barn her is stranded on, or to the left of the barn. Every time Jamie guesses wrong, the water level rises one foot until the river swallows him up and he floats downstream accepting defeat and not putting up a fight to save himself. He sees something in the river that glows so bright it hurts his eyes and he thinks it's a fallen star, but as he passes the glowing object he realizes it's a hand that is pulling him to safety. In the dream he feels as though he is part of the river now and he doesn't want to be saved. In reality he knows he would have died if it weren't for Henry saving him and this is when he realizes that he is who he is because of his brother Henry. Jamie looked up to his brother as a child and wanted to be just like him. When Jamie would wake from his reoccurring dream, he would feel ashamed of himself and weak that he let the water take control of him in his dream because he knew his older brother would never give up if that were him. Jamie has heard stories that ever since he was an infant, he would cry whenever a man would hold him until the first time his older brother Henry had met him upon arriving home from the Cold War and that is when their connection had begun. Henry never liked talking about his wartime experiences, but when he took Jamie out for his eighth birthday hunting he felt it was necessary. Henry had shot a deer, but it wasn't a clean kill and when Henry and Jamie realized the deer was not alive Henry had to slit its throat to put it out of its misery. That's when Henry made Jamie promise that if he ever had to fight in the war, to be a pilot because fighting on the ground is a lot harder on a soldier. After that day Jamie fell in love with the thought of flying. He imagined himself killing "huns" in the field,