Themes In Snow Falling On Cedars

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Love. Death. Prejudice. And truth. These are all themes explored in Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. One theme explored through out the whole novel is death. Death is all around us the was we respond to it defines us.

Death can bring on guilt. One character who was really affected by death in this book was Kabuo. He is an American born Japanese. When the World War II started he volunteered for the army, he experienced a lot of death during his time in the was and the guilt still haunts him. One passage form the novel states “He knew himself privately to be guilty of murder, to have murdered men in the course of war, and it was this guilt- he knew no other word- that lived in him perpetually and that he exerted himself not to communicate.”(Guterson