What Is Snow Falling On Cedars About?

We can see from the first page of Snow Falling on Cedars that Guterson is a very detailed author who tends to look into objects and people in depth. This style of writing is particularly useful when trying to determine what kind of people are living in the San Piedro, and the kind of lives they are living and also their reactions towards other people. Throughout this essay I am going to look in detail at the descriptions of Guterson and how his descriptions shape the characters and the atmosphere of the isolated island.

Guterson starts his novel with a very detailed analysis of the ‘accused man’ Kabuo Miyamoto and the court room which he is placed in at the beginning of the novel. This automatically gives the reader no chance of opinion as this character is, from the start, refused an identity by Guterson. This also gives us an idea of the opinions and views of the people who will be sitting in the public gallery.

Kabuo is described by Guterson has a very withdrawn and subdued character, who is seen as having something to hide because of the way he is placed into the novel and courtroom;

“Some in the gallery would later say that his stillness suggested a disdain for the proceedings; others felt certain it veiled a fear of the verdict that was to come.”

Although we have not yet been told what Kabuo has done, Guterson automatically places a sense of distrust and dislike against Kabuo for the action in which he has supposedly committed.

Guterson then begins to describe the atmosphere of the courtroom and of how people react to important incidents which don’t occur in an isolated island such as San Piedro. He explains that a situation like this is so irregular people don’t even have suitable attire except for the outfits they wear to church on a Sunday. He describes the courtroom as being run down and simple, which can also be associated with the community of San Piedro as both are of a miserable nature and only consist of the necessities.

Guterson explains the jurors to be people who are increasingly uncomfortable as they are out of the situations and surroundings which they are used to;

“The jurors sat with studiously impassive faces as they strained to make sense of matters. The men – two truck farmers, a retired crapper, a bookkeeper, a boat builder, a grocer, and a halibut schooner deckhand – were all dressed in coats and neckties.”

Guterson is trying to show that not one of the people on the jury are in a comfortable situation and are all seen as being nervous.

We are shown throughout the novel the way in which the people of San Piedro react to people are outsiders o foreigners to the people who live on the small island, we can see that the islanders feel very uncomfortable towards people who they don’t know or who are from another country. The first incidence we see this is aimed at the reporters who are placed next to the radiators giving out sweltering heat, so we then see that the islanders are intentionally trying to make the outsiders feel very uncomfortable throughout their stay on San Piedro island. But we can see through Guterson’s immense detail to the background and the residents of San Piedro that they are relatively hypocritical in their views. Firstly Guterson explains the background of the island and the nature of the people who lived their and their reaction to foreigners coming ashore. We can see that the opinions of the past and present residents of San Piedro are very similar, as they all felt and feel very strongly about outcasts and foreigners. But as Guterson continues his description we are shown that a very large majority of the people are not initially from San Piedro;

“Larsen’s Pharmacy, a dime-store-with-fountain owned by a woman in Seattle, a Puget Power office, a chandlery, Lottie Opsvig’s apparel shop, Klaus Hartmann’s real estate agency, the San Piedro Caf�, the Amity Harbor Restaurant, and a battered, run-down filling station owned and operated by the Togerson brothers.”

This shows that the people of Amity Harbor are extremely hypocritical because they choose who they treat as outcasts and ho they decide to give American citizenship to. There maybe two ways of deciding why they choose to treat differently firstly people who look physically different from themselves, for instance eyes is seen as important feature throughout the novel as the Japanese as the San Piedro citizens distinguish them as being different because their eyes are slanted unlike theirs. Also people who have the same origin as people who have attempted to destroy the people of San Piedro, for instance, the Japanese and the attack of Pearl Harbour during World War II. On the contrary they should also hold the same feelings for Carl Heine as he is German, and his Country also have a background of misery towards the people of the island as they would of fought against the Germans during World War I. This is not true as we can see through the novel as Guterson shows Carl Heine as very respected and valued citizen of Amity Harbor.

Pathetic Fallacy is seen throughout the first few chapters as Guterson describes in extreme detail, but we are also able to see the clever way which Guterson uses these details to also show the comparisons of weather and the opinions and feelings of people on the island. The majority of the time the weather on the island is very bleak and damp, throughout the novel you can see that the weather places a huge part of the activities of the people as they are restricted by the weather. Also the inhabitants of Amity Harbor are subdued and submissive to each other, as not many are seen to make an effort towards being friendly with other people on the island. This may be due to the fact that the majority of the people that live on the island make a living through fishing, this means that they will then be used to spending a lot of the time on their own, in pretty much silence for a lot of the time.

There is a rational explanation for the dismissive and subdued relationships of the people of Amity Harbor, we can see through the beginning chapters that a substantial proportion of the men of San Piedro fought in the World War II. We can see through the emotions of the past soldiers that they haunted by their memories of the war, this then caused them to stop taking things for granted; to respect people and to feel privileged for what they have got and for what they have achieved;

“His cynicism – a veteran’s cynicism – was a thing that disturbed him all the time. It seemed to him after the war that the world was thoroughly altered. It was not even a thing you could explain to anybody, why it was that everything was folly.”

Three of the main characters of the novel have all been seriously affected by the effects of war, which you can see is either used against the character or they are treated like a hero. For instance Kabuo Miyamoto was affected by the war just as much as Ishmael Chambers and Carl Heine, but only Carl Heine out of the three is treated like a war hero rather than an outsider. Ishmael Chambers is treated like an outcast because he has had his arm amputated and Kabuo Miyamoto was treated like an outcast from the outset because of his background. The community of San Piedro has no respect for all the veterans of the war as all three of the people served in World War II, but only one of the men were actually fully respected for their service. This is useful to determine the real feelings and racism of the people of San Piedro and also no-one can determine whether or not anyone is a treated like a true citizen of Amity Harbor, as Ishmael is treated as an outsider because of a loss of limb even though he is an American Citizen.

In conclusion we can see that from Guterson’s descriptions the people of San Piedro are hypocritical who are very racist towards outsiders and foreigners. We can see from past and present that this racism has always been there, the majority of the people of this isolated island feel this way. On the other hand most citizens are very subdued and appear to be very silent and private, as most live a life associating with little people and spending a lot of time on their own fishing for their families.