General information:
Title: All the lights we cannot see
Written by: Anthony Doerr
Type of Work: Fiction
Genre: WWII fiction
First Published: 2014
Setting (primary): Saint-Malo, France
Settings (secondary): Paris, France; Zollverein, Germany; Schulpforta, Germany; Berlin, Germany
Main Characters: Marie-Laure LeBlanc, Werner Pfennig, Daniel LeBlanc, Etienne LeBlanc, Madame Manec, Jutta Pfennig
Major Thematic Topics: The tragedy of war; worlds within worlds; free will and predetermination; moral relativism; the power of the invisible realm
Anthony Doerr:
Anthony Doerr (1973) was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections The Shell Collector and Memory Wall, the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, and the novels About Grace and All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It took him 10 years to writ all the lights you cannot see in 2014 is it first published.
Summary:
1. Childhood
Marie-Laure is a blind girl who lives with her father in Paris. Her father is a locksmith at the museum of natural history. To help Marie-Laure handle her blindness her father builds a wooden replica of their neighbourhood in Paris, so she can learn to navigate blind trough the city. When Marie-Laure is twelve years there are a lot of rumours about a German occupation. So the museum entrusts Marie-Laure’s father with most valuable diamond of the museum, called the Sea of Flames. They have to bring the diamond to a friend of the museum.
At the same time there is a boy Werner who grows up in Germany, as an orphan. He and his sister Jutta live in an orphan range. Werner is very intelligent he likes to learn about science and mechanics. When he finds a broken radio on the street he is capable to make it. From that moment he and his sister listen to a broadcast from a French professor about sciences. He learns more and more he hopes that he one day might be a scientist. But every boy from fifteen years old has to work in a coalmine. So his dream is not very realistic. Until he repairs the radio a Nazi official’s radio, they offer to give him a place at a Nazi school.
2. During the war
The friend Marie-Laure and her father try to find isn’t at his home anymore. So they continue to her great-uncle Etienne’s house in Saint Malo. To help her find her way in Saint Malo her father built again a wooden replica of the city, and he hides the valuable diamond in the replica of her great-uncle’s house. In that time the Germans confiscate all the radio’s but Etienne keeps one hidden in his attic. After a view months Marie-Laure’s father is summoned to return to museum, but on his way he got arrested and sent to a prison camp. In the meantime, the housekeeper from Etienne organizes a group of women who fight against the Nazi occupation. She uses the hidden radio installation in the attic to send illegal broadcasts out, where they share information for the Allied intelligence.
Werner has a difficult time at the Nazi school. They are very brutal and all the students are prepared to give their live for the Reich, but Werner isn’t so sure about that. When his science teacher discovers that Werner a technical genius is, he let Werner built a machine that can calculate the location of radio broadcasts using trigonometry. When the machine is finished his science teacher sent Werner to the military, where he joins a team that hunts down anti-German radio broadcasts. He travels through different countries like Russia, Poland but he ends in Saint Malo where is story comes together with the story form Marie-Laure.
Through the whole story there is a separate storyline from a German officer, who is searching for the valuable diamond that is hidden in the wooden replica from Saint Malo. And in the end this becomes very dangerous for Marie-Laure.
Approaches:
Historical:
The genre of the book is world war II, this is a horrible period to live in. People live in anger and fear, they don’t know how long they will have to live and if the war will end sometime. In the book there isn’t a lot spoken about religious belief or something. The thing you can clearly see through the book are the remains of the age of enlightenment. The books who the father from Marie-Laure bought for her are part one and part two from twenty thousand leagues under the sea. A science fiction novel based on a lot of science and physics. Also the other books that the great-uncle Entienne read to Marie-Laure are from Darwin. The man who came up with the evolution theory. In his place Werner listened to science broadcast when he was younger. So you really see the age of enlightenment where everything is based on facts, like natural laws. The knowledge about science and physics brought Werner his place in the Nazi school so it’s very important that he knows all that stuff. Knowing is owning.
Societal:
The novel is an exploration of the tragedy of war. Werner got big dream to become a famous scientist but instead he got the choice between working in a coalmine or giving his life for the Nazi. Marie-Laure loses her father, Jutta Werner’s sister got to miss her brother and many people got mistakenly killed. People couldn’t really choose what they wanted to do in their lives. Werner could one choose between two options he both didn’t want to do. Marie-Laure sat in the same position she couldn’t do what she wanted to do, she wanted to go to school to go outside. But instead she got to be inside hiding for the war. Werner and Marie-Laure lived both in their imagined worlds within worlds. For Marie-Laure her braille books, so she can think of world she wanted to live in. Werner had the science broadcasts he listened to when he was younger. They appealed his endless curiosity about the world. So both children imagine their perfect future rather than the future their place in global history has predetermined.
Many Germans don’t do anything against their own government. Werner becomes symbolic for them. Because many citizens don’t know how to respond and instead of doing something they just stand by. In Werner’s character you see that this can happen to a human. He doesn’t want to kill so many people, he doesn’t want to work for the nation but he has no choice. When he doesn’t want to work for the nation he will be arrested or even worse killed. In addition, many people thought that what the Nazi did was good because the Nazi propaganda tells them that other countries are enemies who wants to destroy Germany. So got people a wrong view at the reality. Jutta the sister from Werner listened to other foreign broadcasts where they exactly the opposite told. German is the devil who is wrong and selfish. So she can’t understand why Werner works for the nation and she raises him the question of ethics when she asks if it’s right to do something only because others are doing it. Werner has his doubts but he doesn’t stop working for the nation. The rest of his life Werner continues to wrestle with ethics. he is torn between two notions of what is ethical: doing what people think is “good” behavior versus feeling that he is “betraying something.”
I think the message in this book in that we have to be grateful for our freedom and that we have to make well-advised decisions. That you don’t think things are good because others do the same, you have to think for yourself is something good or bad. The really opened my eyes, because I never have to deal with things that I cannot do, I can do things that I like to do and learn for the job that fits in my perfect future. But in that time you didn’t get a choice you had to do what the nation said you got to do. So I think we have to be very grateful for the time we live in.
Textual:
The structure of the book is very strange. There are two storylines who alternate each other and the book is divided in thirteen parts.
Part zero: 7th August 1944
Part one: 1934
Part two: 8th August 1944
Part three: June 1940
Part four: 8th august 1944
Part five: January 1941
Part six: 8th August 1944
Part seven: August 1942
Part eight: 9th August 1944
Part nine: May 1944
Part ten: 12th August 1944
Part eleven: 1945
Part twelve: 1974
Part thirteen: 2014
The story begins in medias res, you don’t know anything about the characters and about what’s really happening. Until part one there you learn about the childhood of the children and the time they live in. The story is told in the third person, in an omniscient point of view. So you can look in the mind of every character and you can easily identify yourself with the characters. It’s easily to understand why persons make a decision and how they feel. In the book there are also a view moment when you know more than the character’s self. That makes that there is a lot of suspense. Because you already know what is going to happen and you think don’t do that. So there is a scene that warns readers that Marie-Laure’s father is in danger, though he himself doesn’t know it yet. So he just goes outside and got arrested. Through the whole story there is a lot of suspense because you are curious if the main characters will survive the war, if the housekeeper will get arrested because she shares information for the Allied intelligence and there are lots of other examples. The structure self makes the story also interesting because every time you end reading a part you remain with question that in a view parts later got answered.
Recommendation
I would recommend this book to my classmates and not only my classmates but my parents and teachers. This because at first I really enjoyed reading the book and reading this book set me thinking about the second word war. Further the use of suspense and plot twists is great. You will try finishing the book as soon as possible and therefore I don’t think people should be scared about the amount of pages in the book. The fact that you can also learn a lot from it makes in from my point of view an even more interesting book. So go out and re