Literary Devices in Snow Falling on Cedars
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Set in 1954, almost a decade after the end of World War II, the story takes place on the fictional island of San Piedro in Washington state, whose only town is Amity Harbor. San Piedro is described...
Narrator Point of View
Able to zoom back and forth in time with ease, or move seamlessly from a flashback into the person's present-day testimony, our narrator is about as omniscient as they come. In fact, sometimes s/he...
Genre
World War II and its aftermath are central to the major plot points in this novel, shaping the book's central love stories (between Hatsue and Ishmael and Hatsue and Kabuo) and driving the fear and...
Tone
It feels like the narrator of Snow Falling on Cedars has clambered up one of those cedar trees and perched there so s/he can monitor the characters and events that take place from a healthy distanc...
Writing Style
The narration switches back and forth nimbly between the characters' memories and the present day. The device of the trial is largely responsible for this fluidity; when characters testify during t...
What's Up With the Title?
Well, a snowstorm dominates the present-day timeline, and cedars and cedar wood are all over the place as well. As we've already mentioned elsewhere (see "Symbols"), snow and cedars are both pretty...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
Epigraph #1: "In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn w...
What's Up With the Ending?
Ishmael caps off the story with a couple of conclusions he's come to about life and love. First, he has realized that "[t]he heart of any other, because it had a will, would remain forever mysterio...
Tough-o-Meter
This is a long book that demands some level of awareness of the history of World War II (and fishing life—there's a lot of boat talk), or at least a willingness to engage with the subject matter....
Plot Analysis
Guilty Until Proven Innocent?Local fisherman Kabuo Miyamoto is on trial for allegedly killing fellow fish-catcher Carl Heine, Jr. The book opens on Day 1 of the trial, with the prosecution making i...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
Although the story is pretty ensemble-oriented and focused primarily on the Miyamoto trial, it's fair to say that the protagonist is the reporter Ishmael Chambers. Despite the fact that he's not th...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
The trial of local fisherman Kabuo Miyamoto opens in the winter of 1954. Miyamoto is accused of having murdered another local fisherman, Carl Heine, in the fall. We learn a lot about the characters...
Trivia
2014 marks the twentieth anniversary of Snow Falling on Cedars' publication. In honor of the occasion, David Guterson wrote an essay in the Spring 2014 edition of The American Scholar. (Source)Davi...
Steaminess Rating
An alternate title for this book could be Snow Falling on Naughty Bits, as there's quite a bit of steamy content. Also, beyond the sex scenes, there are a couple of, er, rather vivid and non-sexy d...
Allusions
Alger, Horatio (31.5)Aristotle (31.4)St. Augustine (31.4)Austen, Jane, Sense and Sensibility (31.2)Bacon, Sir Francis (31.4)Baudelaire, Charles, Flowers of Evil (24.14)Bergson, Henri (31.4)Bronte,...