full title
Snow Falling on Cedars
author
David Guterson
type of work
Novel
genre
Courtroom drama; historical novel; coming-of-age novel
language
English
time and place written
United States, 1984–1994
date of first publication
1994
publisher
Harcourt Brace and Company
narrator
An anonymous third-person narrator
point of view
The narrator speaks in the third person and is omniscient,
able to see all of the action, both past and present, and aware
of what is going on inside the minds of all the characters. The
narrator alternates between a straightforward narrative of events
and moments of subjective narration from within the minds of various
characters.
tone
The narrator’s tone is serious and distant, though
at times sympathetic to the characters.
tense
Past, with flashbacks between the trial (December 1954)
and various earlier events and interactions
setting (time)
December 1954, with flashbacks
setting (place)
San Piedro, a fictional island in Puget Sound, Washington; flashbacks
include scenes in Seattle, Montana, California, Japan, the Tarawa
Atoll in the South Pacific, and other places
protagonist
Ishmael Chambers
major conflict
Kabuo Miyamoto stands trial for the murder of Carl
Heine, while Ishmael Chambers struggles to overcome his emotionally and
physically shattered past.
rising action
Kabuo’s arrest for murder; Hatsue’s request for Ishmael’s
help; Ishmael’s bitterness about Hatsue’s rejection of him
climax
Ishmael’s discovery, in Chapter 23,
of evidence proving Kabuo’s innocence brings Ishmael’s conflicting
desires to hurt and help Hatsue to a breaking point.
falling action
Ishmael’s rereading of Hatsue’s letter as he sits
in his father’s study; Ishmael’s decision to help Hatsue by coming
forward with the evidence that exonerates Kabuo; Judge Fielding’s
dismissal of the charges against Kabuo
themes
The struggle between free will and chance; the cyclical
nature of prejudice; the limits of knowledge
motifs
The storm; the body; testimony
symbols
The cedar tree; Arthur Chambers’s chair; the courthouse; Ishmael’s
camera
foreshadowing
The snowstorm brewing outside the courthouse at the
beginning of the trial hints at the impersonal forces, such as prejudice,
that will be at work during the trial. Arthur Chambers’s question
to Ishmael about which facts the newspaper should print hints at the
unreliability of people’s perceptions of the truth.
