Facts vs. Truth Theme Analysis

So much of Snow Falling on Cedars centers around a quest for the truth. The jury of San Piedro undertakes one such quest when they are tasked with determining whether Kabuo Miyamoto is innocent or guilty of Carl Heine’s murder. Throughout the novel, Guterson investigates the ways that facts may be interpreted differently depending on the truth people want to believe, given their various prejudices and personal motives. In the novel, Guterson argues that truth is not clear cut and objective; instead, truth is subject to interpretation and can be trimmed and tucked to fit the narrative a person wants to create or perpetuate. And, since truth is subjective, Guterson also suggests that one must think critically about why they believe what they do.

Guterson establishes the conflict between facts and truth early in the novel, when Ishmael recalls an argument he had years ago with his father, Arthur Chambers, who had founded and reported for the San Piedro Review, the island’s sole newspaper. The argument concerned the process by which his Arthur chose which facts to select for publication in the Review and which to leave out. Ishmael recalls his father’s coverage of prejudice directed at the Japanese islanders during the war: “Arthur printed the sheriff’s message. He printed a notice from the defense authority telling Japanese nationals on San Piedro that as of December 14 they could no longer ride the ferries. Twenty-four men, he wrote in a news article, had been named by Larry Phillips to be the civilian defense auxiliary fire force, including George Tachibana, Fred Yasui, and Edward Wakayama.” Arthur Chambers, Ishmael’s father, printed the names of these three men in particular in order to stick up for the Japanese Americans on San Piedro island, to paint them in a positive light in a time of heightened prejudice. Arthur explained: “Yes I did, I singled those three out. […] Not every fact is just a fact, […] It’s a kind of…balancing act. A juggling of pins, all kinds of pins, that’s just what journalism is about.” In Arthur’s eyes, journalism is about contextualizing facts so that they form a larger truth. A journalist has to emphasize certain facts and omit others in order to tell a story. But Ishmael disagreed. “That isn’t journalism,” he responded to his father. “Journalism is just the facts.” Arthur challenged his son, though, asking, “But which facts? […] Which facts do we print, Ishmael?” Arthur believed that people instinctually impose a narrative onto the facts they observe, leaving out some and playing up others in order to fit the truths they want to believe; his job as a journalist, therefore, is to decide which “truths” the people need to hear. In this instance, Arthur arranged his facts to support the narrative that the Japanese citizens of San Piedro are not traitorous spies, but loyal Americans doing their part to protect the country—a truth, Arthur felt, many of the prejudiced islanders were unwilling to see.

The bias involved in Carl Heine’s autopsy demonstrates another instance in which a subjective interpretation of facts is molded into “truth.” Guterson states that, as San Piedro’s coroner, “It was [Horace Whaley’s] duty to find out the truth.” Although Horace’s task seems to be objective in nature, he is quick to construct a subjective narrative of the truth that implicates Kabuo Miyamoto in Carl’s murder. When Horace discovers “the wound to the skull over the dead man’s left ear,” his thoughts immediately turn to Kabuo and the Japanese martial art of kendo. Horace generalizes: “The majority of Japs […] inflicted death over the left ear, swinging in from the right.” Fueled by prejudice and referring to Kabuo with an ethnic slur, Horace constructs an autopsy report that implicates Kabuo in the death from the start. While Horace constructs his autopsy report around physical, factual pieces of evidence found on the corpse, the choices he makes in his examination are fueled by a narrative he chose to believe in: that most of the Japanese people he encountered in the war inflicted wounds of this sort, that Kabuo was Japanese and fought in the war, and that, therefore, this wound must have been inflicted by Kabuo, thus implicating him in Carl’s murder. In fact, the wound on Carl’s head was caused by Carl’s own ship, and the death was accidental. Horace hadn’t bothered to consider this as a possibility, though, as he was already invested in his subjective version of the truth.

As the residents of San Piedro are tasked with determining Kabuo Miyamoto’s guilt or innocence, they must also grapple with the larger issue of determining their own assessments of what constitutes the truth. Some, like Horace Whaley, never pause to consider the way their own prejudices influence their grasp of what is true or false. Others, like Ishmael Chambers, discover that defining and reflecting on truth is more complicated than simply regurgitating the facts. Ultimately, the characters to whom Guterson extends the most sympathy are those who have learned to recognize their limited perspective and see beyond their personal, subjective versions of the world.