"The white scar I saw on Emiko's small, fine-boned hand was a tiny metaphor, a faint but eloquent reminder of the scar on humanity's conscience." Kildare Dobbs reminds us of humanity's biggest mistakes but also warns us of our greatest danger; "a modern thermonuclear weapon [is] upwards of 1,000 times more powerful and deadly then the Hiroshima bomb," a chilling fact that throughout Dobbs" The Shatterer of Worlds is explicated through an illustration demonstrating the causal relationships between war and victimization. Kildare Dobbs illustrates and personifies the city of Hiroshima as "fragile vivacious gentle," of tradition, tea ceremony and flower arrangements, humble and delicate people. The city is personified in the life of a "frail school-child," Emiko, who seem helpless and impoverished, as well as "undernourished." In contrast, while Dobbs illustrates the city as weak, the United States bombers are dehumanized as a "fleet", a mass of metal and explosives which would seem to be detached, impassive and isolated from the city altogether. Dobbs compares the experience of the atomic bomb of Emiko's point of view to the experience of Captain Lewis of the U.S. B-29 bomber, where this atrocious and devastating disaster had left "furnace that had been a city." The bomber is 30, 000 feet high and several miles away, whereas the delicate Emiko was blown 40 feet away, standing within a mile of the explosion but protected by building walls. The piece identifies the U.S. bombers as very detached and void, merely flying over a target and dropping a bomb, but however the target is victimized and helpless, "hideously burned" in a "lake of fire," as Emiko witnessed a few of the 79, 000 deaths. Emotionally, the audience is horrified by the brutal imagery. .
Moreover, Dobbs now makes an important literary statement. The "scar" that Emiko has received in the wake of her injuries from the bombing of Hiroshima is more then just an improperly healed wound on her hands, but an improperly healed wound on the hands of humanity.
