Snow Falling on Cedars: Delaying the Drama

IO ANSWER: IO explored several options for our inaugural Book Club, some of them more closely paralleled Madama Butterfly and some of them explored some of the surface themes of the opera (for instance Memoires of a Geisha). In the end, we felt that it was more interesting and thought provoking to explore the themes of discrimination, cultural insensitivity and unrequited love. What struck me, even in the first pages of the book, was Ishmaels subtle similarities to Butterfly – he’s pining for someone he can’t have and in many ways he doesn’t fit into his own community, he’s an outsider among his own people much like Butterfly was a bt of an outsider among her culture and Pinkerton’s culture.

IO ANSWER: In the beginning of the novel, which takes place during a snow storm, you can feel the cold emanating from the page and can so clearly picture the dim courtroom and the hushed chatter that seems to accompany inclement weather. Gunderson is quietly building to a dramatic revelation, and I found myself struggling not to skip ahead to discover the crime. I felt, though, when he finally got there, that the revelation was actually a bit anti-climatic. This is in sharp contrast to Puccini, who quickly foreshadows Butterfly’s fate with Pinkerton’s lackadaisical attitude about his marriage contract with Cio-Cio San and Cio-Cio San’s obvious devotion to Pinkerton. While Puccini gives us this bit of insight at the beginning of the opera, he delays the most dramatic moment until the very end. Unlike Gunderson, when Puccini’s intentions for Butterfly are revealed, even when you know it’s coming, it’s dramatic and poignant every time.