Reading Snow Falling on Cedars as a Historical (Crime) Novel

In my article I give a reading of David Guterson's novel Snow Falling on Cedars (1995) as a historical novel. The setting of the novel is a fictional island in the Puget Sound outside Seattle, Washington, in 1954. Kabuo Miyamoto, an American fisherman of Japanese descent, has been charged with the murder of another fisherman, Carl Heine, an American of German descent. Although the novel primarily portrays individual destiny and life on San Piedro island, the novel also gives insight into aspects of American culture in the 1940s and 1950s. Since the alleged crime remains a central element of the plot and the structure of the novel, I first compare the structure of the novel with typical crime story formulas. Then I argue that Guterson has succeeded in capturing social forces of the time and giving insight into the causes of tension between European Americans and Japanese Americans. Based on Georg Lukács's work, The Historical Novel, I make the claim that Snow Falling on Cedars can contribute to a better understanding of the social history of the American West, as well as the mechanisms of stereotyping and prejudice in any society. When viewed as a historical novel, the destiny of the Japanese Americans in Snow Falling on Cedars can be seen as reflecting the destiny of Japanese Americans in general. I attempt to prove this by taking a closer look at the history of the Japanese Americans from 1941 until the fight for redress was won in the late 1980s. In the final section of the article I discuss the concept of prejudice in order to focus on the human tendency to stereotype and harbor prejudice. This is in many ways the source of all the "crimes" in Snow Falling on Cedar

The books-and-reading convention in PEN/Faulkner award-winning novels

This study sought to determine if late twentieth century novelists continue the use of the books-and-reading convention developed in the nineteenth century The PEN/Faulkner Award novels published between 1981 and 1998 provided the selection for study A grounded theory of qualitative analysis of the sixteen existing PEN/Faulkner Award novels revealed seventeen categories of the books-and-reading convention All sixteen novels use at least one instance of the convention Ten novels use more than half of the categories The frequent use of books and reading to define characters, further plot, and point up theme attests to its continued use in the twentieth century in the PEN/Faulkner Award novel

Threads of influence: Greek tragedy and its relevance to the contemporary novel, with specific reference to Donna Tartt's 'The secret history', and my novel, 'The first seven years'

This MPhil concerns the contemporary literary novel and how it has been influenced by the Golden Age of Greek tragedy. It comprises of three parts: the thesis and the novel, hereby presented, and the journal of creative experiences, which was observed at viva. My thesis examines the historical development of Greek tragedy and its structure. It further explores how tragedy has influenced writers through the ages, culminating in the literary tragedy of today. The methodology of tragic form is investigated in the works of writers educated in Greek tragic structure, and also those with no classical background. This thesis aims to show how novelists without a classical education have accessed the tragic form, via threads of literary influence, and utilised it successfully, albeit often unconsciously. My novel, The First Seven Years, is a work of contemporary tragic fiction. It tells the story of one woman’s attempts to do the best for her child. Trapped between raising her young son, Alfie, and caring for an increasingly frail elderly relative, Kate becomes emotionally and physically stretched. When she discovers Alfie has been badly bullied in his failing state school, her attempts to change schools have tragic consequences. Finally, my journal, presented at viva, compiles my creative thoughts, notes and research for both novel and thesis in one portfolio. My original notebooks show much of my novel’s planning and I have included visual images used of characters, buildings, locations, Kate’s photography and Martha’s pottery. Factual research is also integrated; investigating peripheral neuropathy, school league tables and admissions criteria. Thesis research includes relevant newspaper cuttings, programmes to Oedipus Rex and Phèdre, readings by DBC Pierre & Jeanette Winterson, and an interview with David Guterson. This journal has proved invaluable throughout my MPhil, both as an inspiration and an aide-mémoire

Boston University Women's Chorale, Concert Choir, and Chamber Chorus, December 4, 2006

This is the concert program of the Boston University Women's Chorale, Concert Choir, and Chamber Chorus performance on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:00 p.m., at Marsh Chapel, 735 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Works performed were A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 by Benjamin Britten; Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150 by Johann Sebastian Bach; Lord, Thou hast been our refuge by Ralph Vaughan Williams; Some Thoughts on Keats and Coleridge by Earl Kim; Five Hebrew Love Songs by Eric Whitacre; and Five Mystical Songs by R. Vaughan Williams. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Center for the Humanities Library Endowed Fund

It’s the body that matters: reticence and desire in 'Snow Falling on Cedars'

David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars contains all the elements for a good story – unfulfilled desire, a dead body that has met its end mysteriously, a quest for “the truth”, a trial, unrequited love and finally, a solution to an elegantly constructed puzzle. Overlay these elements with the most seductive siren song for late twentieth-century audiences, ethnicity and race relations, and the story looks irresistible. And irresistible it was for Universal Studios who bought the publishing rights for the book and hired Australian Scott Hicks of Shine fame to direct the film, released in 1999

Visions of Blindness: Narrative Structures in 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Snow Falling on Cedars'

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1926) and David Guterson’s Snow Falling On Cedars (1995) are both novels that thematise the act of murder. The narration that unravels the murderous events in each novel is complicated through the creation of perspectives that are essentially unstable. The Great Gatsby utilises Nick Carraway’s singular narration as the primary though unreliable viewpoint to tell the story of Jay Gatsby and his adulterous and tragic affair with Daisy Buchanan on Long Island in New York City. This affair leads to the manslaughter of Tom Buchanan’s mistress Myrtle Wilson, the murder of Jay Gatsby and the suicide of George Wilson. By contrast, Snow Falling on Cedars builds narrative through a set of multiple, fragmented perspectives, although the primary viewpoint belongs to the white journalist Ishmael Chambers. The narration is partly structured through the genre of courtroom drama in which the murder case involves a Japanese American, Kabuo Miyamoto, who has been accused of killing Carl Heine, a German American fisherman. Carl Heine’s death by drowning would have been assumed to be an accident if not for the racist assumptions made by the detective and the Coroner, and by the close-knit and racially divided community of San Piedro Island. In each novel, the narrator is compelled to form a judgement regarding the accused, and in each novel the unequivocal location of blame in any one individual is made problematic. Both novels utilise gendered, racial, ethnic, and sexual stereotype as a way of exploring the themes of blame and judgement

Cedars, December 8, 1986

https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cedars/1474/thumbnail.jp

The Effects of Three L2 Vocabulary Learning Methods Through Reading Activity

This study examines the effectiveness of the three vocabulary learning methods the authors adopted. In search of this research issue, the study used longitudinal experiments with 93 university Japanese learners of English (JLEs) for fifteen weeks. Once a week for six consecutive weeks, participants of the three experiment groups were given different treatments for learning 110 targeted English words when they were mainly reading an English textbook: (i) Group A: the Implicit Vocabulary Learning Group with Questions in English/Answers in English Task, (ii) Group B: the Explicit Vocabulary Learning Group with a Cloze Test Task, and (iii) Group C: the Explicit Vocabulary Learning Group with Multiple-choice Word Test Task. A pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest were conducted. The results showed that (i) all the groups improved their performances at the immediate posttest and almost maintained their performance levels at the delayed posttest, which indicate that all the learning methods were more or less effective. However, the developmental degrees of the vocabulary increase were different: Group C showed the highest improvement among the three. From these findings, the authors claim that using a (multiple-choice) word test is fairly effective for JLEs to develop their knowledge of English words

Cedars, March 2014

https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cedars/1037/thumbnail.jp