Book Essay on All the Light We Cannot See

Author's Note: This was written for a school project.

“All the Light We Cannot See,” the surprise hit from now-acclaimed writer Anthony Doerr, tells (primarily) two separate tales of children who grow up during the horror of WWII: a blind French girl, and a genius, Albino German boy. However, as the story progresses, and as more and more characters are introduced, these seemingly separate paths that the story seems to live on start to appear more connected than originally thought. A cursed diamond named the “Sea of Flames;” the struggle to free oneself from their own chains; the longing to help other people, even in the face of intense evil: everything is subject to ordination in this novel. Is the German boy a villain, or a hero? Who is right, but who is wrong?

The story starts in Paris, France, where young blind girl Marie-Laure lives with her kindhearted museum-locksmith of a father, where both live in a considerable peace, that is, of course, until panic settles in due to the fear of the Germans overriding the city, and, in turn, the entire country. Assigned with the task of handling an either fake or real one-of-a-kind diamond, the locksmith and his daughter flee the city in order to both protect their lives and the cursed stone. Meanwhile, German Albino boy Werner Pfenning grows up in a welcoming and care-filling orphanage house, living with his sister and enticed by the thoughts of radios, science, and math; Werner acts mostly as the local radio repairman, that is, until a certain higher-up enlists to him to fix a simple bug with a luxurious machine. From then on, Werner is finally viewed as the highly intellectual boy he is, and is subsequently assigned to a Nazi boarding camp in order to train to serve under the command of the Führer.

The two continue to grow unto their own intricacies and despairs, trying their best to live ordain lives under the utmost pressure a child can handle. However, as fated by a prediction of the past, the “Sea of Flames” curses the owner’s loved ones, and indeed it does so- Marie-Laure’s father, while on a mission to contact the museum headmasters, is apprehended and shipped off to work (unjustly so) in Germany. Continuing on from this, Maure-Larie’s existence only seems to get darker and darker: a close friend dies, war closes in, and her only caretaker left is captured and imprisoned. Meanwhile, Werner has been scouring the outskirts outside of Germany for an inforced objective: to wipe out those who dare to oppose the Nazi forces. It is a harrowing and violent task, having to go from cabin to cabin, killing those who are broadcasting- possibly harmless- signals; obviously, the job continues to beat Werner’s aspirations into the ground… until, that is, he meets the (to him) mysterious Marie-Laure, with a complexion that he can’t help but remember. And this is all it takes: a glimmer of light in the darkness, the hope to escape his more than mundane existence. But, near the end, their stories come full circle: while nearing the end of a bomb raid, Werner rescues a now-helpless Marie-Laure from the confines of her nearly destroyed house (but is, miraculously, still standing tall) after a German official tries and fails to hunt her for the possession of the much sought-after diamond she so loathed for the trouble it had caused her. After this, things seem to settle themselves without much else than fate: Marie-Laure’s father is never found (a record says he caught a sickness sometime during his absence), Etienne (Marie-Laure’s last caregiver) is freed, and, albeit sadly, Werner is killed after being transported to a makeshift hospital by stepping on a German-planted war mine. In the end, we end with the person who so deserves the most pagetime: Marie-Laure, who has quite the epiphany, of which wraps up all of the novel’s most central themes (this will be further elaborated upon later), and fully tying up the sprawling story.

What is perhaps the most interesting (and certainly the most well-utilized) tool in the novel is within the writing itself: this book constantly switches between character perspectives/settings throughout the entirety of its runtime. By swapping between Marie-Laure’s beautiful-yet-dark world, and the bleak, mentally-straining Nazi training camp of Werner’s, Doerr is able to luminously tell a tale that almost feels like nonfiction in and of itself. Not only is the author able to bring these silky, gorgeous worlds to life to create a more-than-enough reading experience, but he is also able to define these varying WWII-set settings to create an absolute truth of life itself. Simply put, it’s more than good writing/setting description; it’s fantastic.

As mentioned earlier, more characters than just Werner and Marie-Laure rule the pages: as the novel goes on, a greater (and more connected) round of characters are introduced; among them include the cancer-stricken man set out to find the stone, Werner’s only training camp friend (Frederick) whose fate only leads to both a tragic and a hopeful end, and the list goes on. While these characters all seem disjointed, they are, in reality, quite the opposite: all of these people have justifications; even the man after Marie-Laure gets appropriate sympathy for his reasoning. These characters aren’t just tropes, just shells- they carry the novel along, whether it is from their defined personalities, reasons for going on, or anything else… these characters are magnificent, plain and simple.

What might just be what the book’s most prominent theme stems from is, quite humorously, the most that is hidden in plain sight as well: the title. “All the Light We Cannot See.” At first, it may seem that the title is simply a reference to Marie-Laure’s blindness; yet, after reading the passage that is soon to be quoted here, the title most likely represents the novel’s biggest theme. What the title is is a direct tie to what is arguably the book’s finest segment: “Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of television programs, of e-mail, vast networks of fiber and wire interlaced above and beneath the city, passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in Metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, commercials for Carrefour and Evian and prebaked toaster pastries flashing into space and back to earth again, I’m going to be late and Maybe we should get reservations? and Pick up avocados and What did he say? and ten thousand I miss yous, fifty thousand I love yous, hate mail and appointment reminders and market updates, jewelry ads, coffee ads, furniture ads flying over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark, over the scarred and ever-shifting landscapes we call nations. And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfenning might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”

“All the Light We Cannot See” binds us all together. Though not visible to us, microwaves and transmissions of thousands- if not millions of- proclamations of love, proclamations of hate, and proclamations of developing feelings glide across the same air we step out into; it’s also entirely possible that the same air that contains current and past feelings emits the souls of the lost. Maybe right at this moment, a soul is watching over you. How can we disprove this, but how can we prove it just the same?

Or maybe the novel is wrong: maybe no souls watch over us, we have no protectors, and we have no passed-on souls watching us from above. However, that is the same probability as the statement that we do have souls floating beside us; the simple answer is we don’t know. Equal chance, equal probability. Infinite souls or finite ones; there is no way to tell, yet there are a million ways to know as well. Believe what you believe, say what you say- the individual truth is different for all of us, and “All the Light We Cannot See” nails this on the head, front and center.

In conclusion, I can confidently say that “All the Light We Cannot See” is a life changing novel. It doesn’t dictate what your ideals are, but, instead, it offers up a thesis that can not be ignored; and, yet, it still leaves room for further developments. This is not the end-all-be-all… it’s the beginning. Powered with strong, defined characters, packed full of great plot, and filled to the brim with amazing writing, “All the Light We Cannot See” is a novel that deserves to be recognized as one of the best books to come out in previous years, and for many more years to come. An absolute masterwork.