Soil and land are necessary for farming. When he is a child, Henry’s father shows him a swath of earth and says: “This is land. Because it’s mine. One day this’ll be your land, your farm. But in the meantime, to you and every other person who don’t own it, it’s just dirt” (71). When Henry brings the family to the farm, it appears as if it will have what they need. But the frequent rain changes the earth to mud, which has no use to a farmer. Indeed, it is detriment to nearly everything a farmer needs from his land. Mud is created when something useful is corrupted, turning it into something that does not work. The children jokingly call their home “Mudbound,” but it soon stops feeling like a joke. Mud and storms isolate the family from the town, and they make it difficult for help to reach them when there are emergencies of any kind. Mud dictates much the reality of life on the farm. 

While remaining devoted to Henry—she stays with him in the end, despite her attraction to, and brief sexual affair with, Jamie—Laura never gets the kind of attention from him that she craves.