Snow Falling on Cedars
David Guterson (1994)
“A Japanese-American fisherman is on trial for murder in a courtroom where every juror remembers the internment camps. The journalist covering the case once loved the defendant's wife — and holds evidence that could set him free.”
Character Analysis
A man frozen by personal bitterness who must choose between grievance and conscience. Ishmael lost his arm at Tarawa and lost Hatsue to Kabuo, and he has allowed those losses to define him for fifteen years. His moral crisis — whether to release evidence that would free Kabuo — is the novel's climax because it tests whether a damaged man can still do the right thing. He is not heroic; he is barely adequate. The novel honors that adequacy because in this community, at this moment, adequacy is heroism.
Educated, literary, self-consciously precise. His narration carries the weight of a man who has read too much and felt too much and cannot stop observing himself observing. Short declarative sentences when bitter; long flowing ones when remembering Hatsue.