Snow Falling On Cedars Essay

Snow Falling on Cedars is a novel that helps illustrate the prejudices that people faced back then after WW2. The main role in this book, Kabuo, is to show the struggles a lot of other Japanese people face. That is mainly because of racism. Even though to many people it may feel like a novel that's meant to touch your heart, the novel educates people on the many views people had during this time. The entirety of the novel Snow Falling on Cedars shows the injustice of the system and how unfair the system was to certain people. It shows that just because your ethnicity is different from others, then you are more likely to be targeted for discrimination. In Kabuo Miyamoto's trial, he was mostly blamed for Carl's death, and even specialists lied

But there is another important meaning behind this tree. The tree symbolizes Hatsue and Ishmael hiding from the prejudices of the war and the hate Japanese people get from Americans. There is a lot of symbolism that occurs in this novel through the landscape and weather, even the rain. Rain symbolizes the uncontrollable events that affect human lives. This involves Carl getting hit in the head and dying, which affects Kabuo's life because he’s being blamed for it. Throughout the novel, you can see the characters change and develop different mindsets. The one change in a character that I noticed that many probably didn’t was that Hatsue Miyamoto becomes more and more stressed and on edge as the trial goes on. Hatsue makes sure to stay calm and collected even in dire situations due to her culture, but I've noticed that she becomes frantic about proving Kabuo's innocence. You can see it on pg. 426 Hatsue is trying to plead with Ishmael to prove his innocence, in which Ishmael tries to use that to his advantage. Ishmael himself shows major character development throughout the novel as well. At the beginning of the novel, it is shown that Ishmael feels a certain way about Japanese people due to his arm being cut off in the war with the Japanese. Ishmael had also been struggling with his emotions before the war when Hatsue and Ishmael ended things due to their different cultures and ethnicities. As the story goes on, all Ishmael can think about are the good memories of Hatsue, which strengthens his hate towards Kabuo even more. But as the story progresses, Ishmael concludes that he and Hatsue were in the past and all he can do now is to move forward and to do the right thing. Ishmael then decides to put his hate behind him and proves Kuboo's innocence as his first step to healing from his past. Unlike Ishmael though, Kabuo Miyamoto stays silent throughout most of the trial and