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Allusions
Key Examples in Snow Falling on Cedars
Flashbacks
Explanation and Analysis—Memory Loops:
Memory loops—flashbacks—appear throughout the novel, and this motif plays a significant role in shaping its structure and mood. For example, courtroom scenes do not stay fixed in the present. Instead, they routinely collapse under the weight of memory in order to show the events that preceded Kabuo’s trial.
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Etiquette Lessons:
This moment appears in a flashback to Hatsue’s youth during one of her etiquette lessons with Mrs. Shigemura. Guterson uses flashback and simile in this scene to show how Mrs. Shigemura teaches Hatsue to treat her hair as a tool:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Mrs. Shigemura lifted Hatsue’s hair in her palms and said its consistency reminded her of mercury and that Hatsue should learn to play her hair lovingly, like a stringed musical instrument or a flute. Then she combed it down Hatsue’s back until it lay opened like a fan and shimmered in unearthly black waves.
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Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Spirit of the Place:
During a flashback to Ishmael and Hatsue’s teenage relationship, Guterson uses flashback, hyperbole, and metaphor to show how Ishmael’s love for Hatsue makes her seem, to him, like part of San Piedro's natural world:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Ishmael’s heart began the fretful pounding he’d experienced of late in her presence. There were no words for what he had to say and his tongue felt paralyzed. He couldn’t stand another moment without explaining his heart to her. A knot of pressure was building inside him to declare the love he felt. It was not only that her beauty moved him but that they already had a history together that included this beach, these waters, the very stones, and the forest at their backs, too. It was all theirs and always would be, and Hatsue was the spirit of the place.
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Explanation and Analysis—Safety of the Cedar:
During the years before the war, Ishmael and Hatsue would meet in secret in the cedar tree, where they would try to create a space that protected them from the rest of the world. The scene revolves around flashback and foreshadowing to show Ishmael and Hatsue’s early closeness as teenagers and to establish the cedar tree as a place to retreat from the world:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The inside of the tree felt private. He felt they would never be discovered here. […] The rain afforded an even greater privacy; no one in the world would come this way and find them inside this tree.
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Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Grown-Up Woman:
The following memory takes place during a flashback to Susan Marie’s teenage years, when she begins to notice and enjoy her changing body. In order to illustrate these changes, the author uses flashback and visual imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was no longer astonished to look in the mirror and find she had developed the breasts and hips of an attractive, grown-up woman. Her astonishment gave way quickly to happiness about it. There was a roundness and firmness to her, a clean, strong roundness, and her heavy blond hair cast a glow over her shoulders when she wore a bathing suit. Her breasts turned just slightly away from one another and brushed against the insides of her arms when she walked. They were large, and when she got over her embarrassment about them she was able to take pleasure in the fact that boys became unnerved in their presence.
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Chapter 24
Explanation and Analysis—Warm Glow:
This memory appears during a flashback to Ishmael’s boyhood, capturing a small, personal moment with his father during a quiet evening at home. Guterson uses a flashback packed with visual imagery to present a quiet, nostalgic picture of Ishmael’s childhood home during a baseball game:
Unlock with LitCharts A+By the late innings of the game the rest of the room, a few laggard coals glowed orange beneath the fireplace grate, lay sleeping in soft, quiescent shadows. Coats hung from polished brass hooks in the foyer, and his father’s books, arranged by size, stood neatly along the glassed-in shelves of two vaultlike oak bookcases. When something momentous came to pass, a home run, a stolen base, a double play, a run batted in, his father would stir, blink two or three times, and by dint of habit bring his hand to rest on the spectacles sitting atop his magazine.
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