Kabuo Miyamoto spends a good chunk of Snow Falling on Cedars imprisoned; in the present-day timeline, he's in jail, and in the flashbacks, he's a prisoner in Manzanar—the Japanese internment camp, where Hatsue and her family are also forced to go. So, yeah, literal prisons are a huge part of the novel. In addition, we often encounter characters who are trapped by their feelings or their inability to let go of the past. Ishmael, for example, springs to mind, since he seems to be completely at the mercy of his feelings for Hatsue for… oh, most of the novel.
Questions About Imprisonment
- What do you make of the fact that Hatsue and Kabuo felt that they had no other choice but to get married? Is this feeling about destiny or about entrapment? Are the two linked in the novel—is destiny associated with feelings of being enclosed or stunted?
- Which does the novel present as worse—literal prisons or the more metaphorical prisons that people create for themselves with their own minds and hearts?
- What is going on when Kabuo feels guilty about catching fish on the evening he meets up with Carl? (It's kind of an odd thing for a fisherman to feel, no?)
Chew on This
The novel presents several instances of literal imprisonment, as well as examples of psychological entrapment, to draw an analogy between the two, showing that psychological prisons can be just as constraining as literal ones.
The novel contrasts actual imprisonment with the feelings and memories that hobble or "trap" certain characters (e.g., Ishmael or Kabuo), suggesting that such memories are, unlike literal imprisonment, within individual control.