How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
This storm might well be like others past that had caused them to suffer, had killed even—or perhaps it might dwindle beneath tonight's stars and give their children snowbound happiness. Who knew? Who could predict? If disaster, so be it, they said to themselves. There was nothing to be done except what could be done. The rest—like the salt water around them, which swallowed the snow without any effort, remaining what it was implacably—was out of their hands, beyond. (17.11)
The narrator describes the islanders' attitude toward the snowstorm that hits the island during the trial. They seem to view themselves as at the mercy of the elements, their fate (or destiny) being completely out of their control. Hmm, how do you think that attitude informs (and is informed by) their behavior toward other areas of life?
Quote #5
Here was the Jap he'd been led to inexorably by every islander he'd spoken with. (18.86)
This free indirect discourse relays Art Moran's growing certainty that all paths in Carl Heine's death lead directly and "inexorably" to Kabuo Miyamoto. Although there are a lot of alternate explanations for Carl Heine's death (including the real one, which had nothing to do with murder), Art seems to believe that bringing Kabuo Miyamoto the only way things could go.
Quote #6
And yet there were still accidents, despite everything. There seemed no way to prevent them. In a thick fog the light could not be seen and boats continued to come aground. The coast guard installed sounding boards along island beaches and anchored numbered buoys at intervals in the shipping channel, and these measures seemed sufficient to islanders until the next accident came along. A tug towing a diesel ferry from San Francisco broke up on the rocks a mile to the north; then a tug towing a barge full of peeler logs; then a salvage steamer working out of Victoria. News of such wrecks was received by islanders with a grim brand of determinism; it seemed to many that such things were ordained by God, or at any rate unavoidable. (23.2)
As noted elsewhere, the capriciousness of the weather has diminished the islanders' sense of control over their own destiny. That's kind of understandable, given that—regardless of their efforts to try to prevent or minimize accidents—they somehow keep occurring.