Questions:
- Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read.
2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.
3. Describe the author's tone. Include three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).
4. Describe five literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the theme and/or your sense of the tone. Include three excerpts that will help your reader understand each one.
Answers:
Snow Falling on Cedars by Greg Guterson
- “Snow Falling on Cedars” by Greg Guterson is both a mystery and romance novel. It takes place on San Piedro Island in 1954. A Japanese man named Kabu is suspect of the murder of Carl Heins. Because this takes place after World War 2, there is tension between the whites and their neighboring Japanese, and this is evident in the trial. Because San Piedro is such a small island, every character is intertwined. Threw the novel we discover that Kabu’s wife, Hatsue, had a teenaged love affair with the white island journalist, Ishmael. Ishmael find out some information about the trial that would save Hatsue’s life; yet he is reluctant to share it because of his jealousy that Hatsue left him for Kabu. In the end, Ishmael does the moral thing, and helps Kabu win the trial. He is sent free and able to return to his family.
- The big obvious theme of this novel is prejudice. First, racially, there is distance between the Whites and Japanese. They live separately, yet they help eachother out economically. For example, the Japanese pick strawberries from the white farmers homes when its time to harvest. In return, the white men pay them. Another bias is physical. Ishmael lost his arm during the war, and people look at him wired. Ishmael is also a journalist, which is a huge contrast from the other men who are either farmworkers, or fishermen. They view Ishmael as weak.
- The overall tone of the novel is very aware of feelings, for all the characters know exactly what they want, and are rarely confused. Example
1. In this scene, Hatsue and Kabu are realizing their love for eachother: “He had begun to love her, to love more than just her beauty and grace, and when he saw that in their hearts they shared the same dream he felt a great certainty about her. They kissed in the back of a crew truck coming into camp one night, and the warm wet taste of her, however brief, brought her down for him from the world of angels into the world of human beings.” The Second scene takes place when Ishmael is at war and is about to go into a deadly situation, so he attempts to write a letter to Hatsue, “He explained to her the nature of his hatres and told her she was responsible for it as anyone in the world. In fact, he hated her now. He didn’t want to hate her, but since this was his last letter he felt bound to tell the truth as completely as he could- he hated her with everything in his heart, he wrote,… ‘I hate you with all my heart. I hate you, Hatsue, I hate you always.” The Third example is when Edna Heins, Carl’s mother, finds out about the plan to send the Japanese to an internment camp, “The Japanese man blinked at her steadily. He said nothing, didn’t touch his coffee either. He’d gone rigid, gone cold. She could see that he was angry, that he was containing his rage. He’s proud she thought, I just spit on him, and he;s pretending it didn’t happen that way. Blink away she thought.”
- Examples- The Japanese internment camp is in very bad condition. This shows the bias that people have against the Japanese. If they didn’t think of them as prisoners of war, then they would have better accomadations.
Foreshadowing- Etta hates the Japanese man who wants to buy their land, and never wants him to have it. “You’re the man of the house, you wear the pants, go ahead and sell our property to a Jap and see what comes of it.” After carls death years later, Etta sells the land to a white man, before the Japanese are finished making the payments.
Characters- Ishmael Cambers never feels like an entire man because he does not have the woman he loves. Once he loses his arm, it is even more obvious than before that he his less. Hatsue says no to marrying him, and this is why, “It was in her to say good-bye forever and tell him she would never see him again,to explain to him that she’d chosen to part because in his arms she felt unwhole.”
Descriptive language- Carl Heins senior loves strawberries, “Her husband was a true lover of the fruit, but Etta couldn’t feel anything for it. To him strawberries were a holy mystery, jewels of sugar, deep red gems, sweet orbs, succulent rubies. He knew their secrets, the path they took, the daily responses they made to sunlight.”
Symbolism- The Cedar tree that Hatsue and Ishmael hide out in, symbolizes a protection from the outside world. Weather does not even protect the tree. “On Sunday afternoot, at four o’ clock, Hatsure told her mother she was going for a walk; her last walk before leaving, she pointed out. She wanted to sit in the forest she said, and think about matters for a while… followed the path to the cedar tree. Ishmael she found, was waiting there for her with his head propped up on his jacket.”
