Snow Falling on Cedars

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…combine. "There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can. . . . Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason." This quotation by Nels Gudmundsson in his closing arguments is the novels view on prejudice and free will. The challenge facing people, Guterson suggests, is learning to recognize the difference between what is human and therefore changeable and what is inhuman and therefore unchangeable.