The novel 'Snow Falling on Cedars' contains many themes: love; prejudice; discrimination and, the topic of this essay, the effect of war. Throughout the novel the effects of Second World War is echoed in many of the characters through the way they feel and the way they act. Gutterson shows how war creates emotional and physical obstacles to communication, happiness and love.
             The main character of the novel, Ishmael Chambers, is used by Gutterson to demonstrate how the effects of war can leave a man feeling bitter and resentful. From the start we learn that Ishmael is unique from anyone else on the island. He is described as 'A man with a hardened face...with the eyes of a war veteran. He had only one arm'. With this obvious 'disability', he is used by Gutterson to show that war cannot be forgotten and its effect is everlasting. Ishmael feels that the loss of his arm isolates him 'he was keenly aware of his pinned-up sleeve and troubled because it troubled other people'. However, Gutterson also shows through Ishmael, that although war can make people feel isolated, this is not how they want to be 'He wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it'. Ishmael, like his father, Arthur, 'loved humankind dearly, and with all his heart, but he disliked most human beings'. War changed Ishmaels view on the world, people and himself – 'he had this view of things – that most human activity was utter folly, his own included, and that his existence in the world made others nervous.'
             Ishmaels' most obvious change of view is the way he views the Japanese population after the ending of his and Hatsues' relationship, which, coincidently coincides with the loss of his arm 'the fucking Japs' he now calls the Japanese and he refers to his childhood love as 'that fucking goddamn Jap bitch'. Gutterson shows here...