Noon recess. Kabuo eats lunch in his cell. Stream of consciousness.

1. What memory troubles him, and how does this reconcile him to his situation?

2. How does he explain appearing to be ‘defiant’? Which words of Nels worry him in the light of his appearance?

3. Flashback to meeting Nels.

What is Nels’s strategy in the chess game and what does this suggest about the way he will handle the defence?

4. How does ‘The game, quite suddenly, was over’ foreshadow the ending?

5. What does his daydream tell us about his ties to San Piedro?

6. What does his memory of the fields tell us of his love for Hatsue?

7. What does his kendo brilliance tell us about him? How might this link with what we learn of his great grandfather to suggest his potential for killing Carl?

Explain Kabuo’s acceptance and fear of his position in the dock.

8. Where are your sympathies at the end of this chapter? What has influenced them?

1. Relate the description of the weather in para 1 to Kabuo’s cell.

2. Ishmael remembers the cedar tree and his conviction that ‘he had been mean to meet her’.

3. Turn back to the last chapter and find the comparable thought from Kabuo.

Explain Hatsue’s religious beliefs and relate them to Ishmael’s dilemma at the end of the book.

4. What does Hatsue mean about ‘determining for herself the motive’ for meeting Ishmael?

5. Why does Hatsue say, ‘This can’t go on’ and what do you think that Ishmael is thinking when he replies, ‘ You’re right’?

6. In this chapter we enter Ishmael’s thoughts as he remembers Hatsue growing away from him.

1. Omniscient narrator tells how Hatsue heard about Pearl Harbor.

2. Explain how Guterson creates the feeling of danger and events moving out of control.

3. How does Ishmael’s father try to maintain the peace between the communities?

4. Is it significant that Ishmael reads these words in the cedar tree?

5. Explain the context of and comment on the irony of Chambers’s words, ‘But which facts…..which facts do we print, Ishmael?’

6. Comment on the use of the passive voice on pp165-6. How does this suggest events are moving? What other techniques does Guterson use to suggest danger and events moving quickly?

7. Relate Chambers’s actions in the last para to the way Ishmael finally behaves.

Chapter 14

1. analyse the way in which a sense of menace is created in the first six pages; consider the lexis, the words exchanged with the agents and the manner of their arrival and conduct.

2 contrast para one with the description of Hatsue walking through the woods on page 178.

3 Explain the contrast between Hatsue's 'We're trapped inside this tree' and Ishmael's 'If we love each other we're safe from it all.'

4 How do the minor characters contribute to the realism of this chapter?

5 What happens in the discussion between Hatsue and her mother?

6 Explain the last paragraph, where Hatsue defines what she had mis taken for love.

Chapter 15

1 what details lend a nightmarish quality to the description of the deportation?

2 what details make it clear that the camp is in effect a prison?

3 can you find parallels between Fujito's and Hatsue's romantic experiences?

4 what does Hatsue explain to her mother?

5 discuss the theme of betayal in this chapter (you may find 3-4 examples of this).

6 what have you learned of the character of Kabuo in this chapter?

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