A character's personality is often times determined by their tone of voice. If the voice or tone of a character is misinterpreted the meaning is misinterpreted as well. In The Color of Water by James McBride, he remarkably switches between his voice to his mothers and back. Using this technique, the reader is able to understand where Ruth McBride (mother) came from mentally and emotionally. In this bittersweet memoir McBride deals with the asperity of growing up in a bourgeois, biracial family in which his voice changes due to his circumstances. The imagery and diction used creates a detailed tableau of words that help distinguish the attitude in both McBride and his mother's voice.
             In order to match his mother's voice, McBride has to retrace her footsteps to try and understand what she went through. All though he will never fully comprehend the turmoil his mother suffered, her drive and discipline to help her children is excellently portrayed. "'You don't need money. What's money if your mind is empty. Educate your mind!'" (32-3). Her one purpose in life was to educate her children not only about school but about religion as well. Not having a sturdy education herself, she forces her children to succeed because "...her children's achievements are her life's work...(275). Throughout the book her tone changes ever so slightly while she deals with sexual abuse, a handicapped mother, and a family which she abandoned. Though some find her voice to be comical others view it to be searing and spirited.
             Growing up in Suffolk, Virginia where racism was nothing out of the ordinary, her father an Orthodox rabbi, naturally did not like black people; men in particular. "So it stands to reason that the first thing I fell in love with in life was a black man. I didn't do it on purpose. I was a rebellious little girl in my own quiet way..."(107). She began her new life not as Ruchel Dwajra Zylska but as Ruth McBride because it did not sound s...