Snow Falling on Cedars

“Snow fell that morning outside the courthouse windows, four tall, narrow arches of leaded glass that yielded a great quantity of weak December light. […] The snow blurred from vision the clean contours of these cedar hills. The sea wind drove snowflakes steadily inland, hurling them against the fragrant trees, and the snow began to settle on the highest branches with great implacability.

The accused man, with one segment of his consciousness, watched the falling snow outside the windows. He had been exiled in the country jail for seventy-seven days—the last part of September, all of October and all of November, the first week of December in jail. There was no window anywhere in his basement cell, no portals through which the autumn light could come to him. He had missed autumn, he realized now—it had passed already, evaporated. The snowfall, which he witnessed out of the corners of his eyes—furious, wind-whipped flakes against the windows—struck him as infinitely beautiful.”

The novel’s title is immediately referenced here. The snow—a key motif—serves to create a lovely atmosphere for Kabuo in contrast with his dark cell. Yet, as the storm mounts, the snow will shift from lovely to dangerous. Further, the snow serves to illustrate to Kabuo the amount of time that has passed while he is in isolation. The realization that an entire season has passed cements the reality of his situation.

“Like most people, Horace felt the need not merely to know but to envision clearly whatever had happened; furthermore, it was his obligation to envision it clearly so that in the official register of Island Country deaths the truth, however painful, might be permanently inscribed. Carl Heine’s dark struggle, [… was] recorded or not recorded, in the slab of flesh that lay on Horace Whaley’s examination table. It was his duty to find out the truth.”

As the coroner responsible for conducting the autopsy, Horace Whaley is in a unique position to bring objectivity to the trial that others cannot. The information he provides can either lend credibility to the murder charge or aid in exonerating Kabuo. His thoughts, too, underscore the theme of truth, implying that Heine’s cause of death is a matter of fact, not opinion, and thus free of bias.

“In the back of Judge Lew Fielding’s courtroom sat twenty-four islanders of Japanese ancestry, dressed in the clothes they reserved for formal occasions. No law compelled them to take only these rear seats. They had done so instead because San Piedro required it of them without calling it a law.”

Here, the racial tensions between the island’s white community and Japanese American community are introduced. The social “law” that insinuates that those of Japanese heritage are inferior strongly impacts the lives of these citizens. This trope foreshadows the importance that race will play in Kabuo’s trial, establishing this central theme.