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Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Key Examples in Snow Falling on Cedars
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Darkness Inside:
Immediately after Horace performs a medical exam on Carl’s corpse, the narrator shifts to focusing on Horace’s inner thoughts. This passage uses metaphor and idiom to reveal how Horace’s experience in the war has shaped his perception of himself and other soldiers like Carl:
And how to explain? What could he say to others? There was no longer any speaking for the hell of it, no opening one’s mouth just to have it open, and if others would read darkness into his silence, well then, darkness was there, wasn’t it? There’d been the darkness of the war in Carl Heine, as there was in Horace himself.
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Tree of Life :
This conversation takes place during Hatsue’s youth, in one of the sessions where Mrs. Shigemura offers her spiritual and cultural instruction. Guterson uses a metaphor in this scene to express Mrs. Shigemura’s belief in the natural unity of life and death and also to reflect her views on the cultural differences between the Americans and the Japanese:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Mrs. Shigemura taught her to seek union with the Greater Life and to imagine herself as a leaf on a great tree: The prospect of death in autumn, she said, was irrelevant next to its happy recognition of its participation in the life of the tree itself. In America, she said, there was fear of death; here life was separate from Being. A Japanese, on the other hand, must see that life embraces death, and when she feels the truth of this she will gain tranquillity.
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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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Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Of This Place:
After the FBI arrests Hatsue’s father, Fujiko tries to prepare her daughters for the inevitability of their exclusion from White American culture. The narrator uses paradox and metaphor in this passage to show the conflict between Hatsue’s desire to belong in America and the racial rejection Fujiko knows she will face:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Her mother seemed to know about the gulf that separated how she lived from what she was. And what was she anyway? She was of this place and she was not of this place, and though she might desire to be an American it was clear, as her mother said, that she had the face of America’s enemy and would always have such a face. She would never feel at home here among the hakujin, and at the same time she loved the woods and fields of home as dearly as anyone could.
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Chapter 22
Explanation and Analysis—All Lines Erased:
This line appears as Ishmael drives through the island blanketed in snow, where the land loses all shape and becomes one white surface without borders or names. Guterson uses metaphor in this moment of reflection to show how the snow-covered world in Ishmael’s memory makes human divisions feel small and foolish:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The world was one world, and the notion that a man might kill another over some small patch of it did not make sense.
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Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Endless Tide:
This moment comes at the end of Kabuo Miyamoto’s trial, when Nels Gudmundsson urges the jury to think about their own values when considering the evidence. Guterson uses personification and metaphor in the elderly lawyer’s closing argument to present injustice as a force that demands moral strength from every juror individually:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I merely wish to point out that in the face of such a world you have only yourselves to rely on. You have only the decision you must make, each of you, alone. And will you contribute to the indifferent forces that ceaselessly conspire toward injustice? Or will you stand up against this endless tide and in the face of it be truly human?
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Chapter 32
Explanation and Analysis—Human Heart:
In the final lines of the novel, Guterson uses a metaphor comparing the chambers of the human heart to a space that’s insulated and protected from the chaos of the outside world. The following scene occurs as Ishmael sits at his typewriter:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Ishmael gave himself to the writing of it, and as he did so he understood this, too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.
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