SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS - DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Snow Falling on Cedars opens in the middle of Kabuo Miyamoto's trial. Pages will pass before we know the crime of which he is accused. What effect does the author create by withholding this information and introducing it in the form of flashbacks? Where else in the narrative are critical revelations postponed?
At the beginning of the trial, San Piedro is in the midst of a snowstorm, which continues throughout its course. What role does snow play - literally and metaphorically - in the book? How does nature shape this novel?
Guterson's description of Carl Heine imparts a fair amount of what is seemingly background information, from his mother's sale of the family farm to his being considered "a good man." How do these facts become crucial later? Where else does the author impart critical information in a casual manner? What does this method suggest about the novel's sense of the meaningful, about the value it assigns to things that might be considered random or irrelevant?
When Carl's body is dredged from the water, the sheriff has to remind himself that what he is seeing is a human being. However, Horace Whaley forces himself to view Carl as "the deceased." Where else in the title are people depersonalized either deliberately or inadvertently? What role does depersonalization play within the novel's larger scheme?
What material evidence does the prosecution produce in arguing Kabuo's guilt? Did these bits of information immediately provoke the investigator's suspicions, or only reinforce their preexisting misgivings about Carl's death? Why might they have been so quick to attribute his death to foul play? How does the entire notion of a murder trial, with facts interpreted differently by opposing attorneys, fit into this book's thematic structure?
Ishmael suffers from feelings of ambivalence about his home and of a cold detachment from his neighbors. Is this due to the loss of his arm or to other events in the past? How is this estrangement mirrored in Hatsue? To what extent do Kabuo and Carl suffer similar feelings? How does this condition serve to unite and to isolate the novel's characters?
What significance do you ascribe to Ishmael's name? What does the protagonist have in common with the narrator of Moby Dick?
What role has the San Piedro Review played in the life of its community? How has Ishmael's stewardship of the paper differed from his father's? In what ways does he resemble his father?
We know the effects of WWII on Ishmael and Horace. How has the war affected other characters in the book, both those who served and those who stayed home?
While Carl represents the island's ideal citizen, how productive does the ideal of silent individualism turn out to be? To what extent is Carl a casualty of his self-sufficiency? What other characters adhere to a code of solitude?
Kabuo and Hatsue possess certain values. How do these values determine their behavior and, particularly, their responses to internment, war and imprisonment? How do they clash with the values of the Anglo community while seeming to resemble them?
Racism is a persistent theme in the novel. In what ways do the book's Japanese characters respond to the hostility of their white neighbors? How does the bigotry manifest itself in the thoughts and behavior of characters like Etta Heine, Art Moran and Ishmael? Are we meant to see these characters as typical of their place and time?
Of the racist white characters in the book, only Etta Heine emerges unsympathetically. How do her values and motives differ from others in San Piedro?
How is Hatsue's doubleness - between Japanese and American - expressed in the novel? How is it expressed for her fellow nisei, Kabuo?
Typically, Ishmael wishes to dissolve boundaries. What limits might Ishmael wish to transcend, even as a boy? Does he ever manage to do so? Does the book hold the promise of transcendence for its characters or at best offer them reconciliation with their limits?
Guterson interweaves his novel's narrative strands with parallelism (i.e.: Ishmael and Kabuo both spy on Hatsue). Where else does he use this technique and to what effect?
The last sentence of the novel is "Accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart." What is the significance of this sentence?
