Summary and Analysis of All the Light We Cannot See

Based on the Book by Anthony Doerr

• Publisher: Worth Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781504044813
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of All the Light We Cannot See tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Anthony Doerr's book. Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. This short summary and analysis of All the Light We Cannot See includes:

• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter overviews
• Profiles of the main characters
• Themes and symbols
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Glossary of terms
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work

About All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel is a beautifully crafted story about the intersection of two very different lives: A German boy with a knack for radios and a blind girl in occupied France are somehow united as Europe is plunges into World War II. An ambitious and symbolic tale spanning eighty years, All The Light We Cannot See illiminates how goodness and hope can be found even in the darkest of times. The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of fiction.

Summary

Zero: 7 August 1944

Chapters: Leaflets; Bombers; The Girl; The Boy; Saint-Malo; Number 4 rue Vauborel; Cellar; Bombs Away

Leaflets rain down on the French sea village of Saint-Malo. Dropped by the Allies during World War II, they warn the citizens to evacuate as the American forces prepare to burn the city. The first short chapter quickly establishes the novel’s style of toggling between several principal narrative threads with brief, poetic chapters.

Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a 16-year-old blind girl living at number 4 rue Vauborel on the sixth and highest floor of the building. She has a detailed, scale model of the city in her bedroom, which she uses to memorize the roads and the buildings of the city. She is waiting out the bombing raid alone, as her great-uncle Etienne, with whom she has lived for the past four years, has been missing since the previous day. Outside her window the city is quiet, but the drone of the airplanes is growing. The leaflet, illegible to her, smells fresh.

Werner Pfennig, the 18-year-old German private who, along with staff sergeant Frank Volkheimer and an engineer named Bernd, is ordered to the cellar of L’hôtel des Abeilles (the Hotel of Bees), formerly a luxurious resort hotel and now an Austrian military stronghold in this French seaside town.

By the following morning the town residents have evacuated, leaving only the old, poor, and blind. Though D-Day occurred two months before, and many other towns in France and Eastern Europe have already been liberated, this is the last German holding on the coast of Breton. The townspeople speak of a warren of underground German tunnels, mountains of supplies, and thousands of troops. The town is an island-city attached to the coast by a tongue of land with a bridge, and on a neighboring island 380 French prisoners held in Fort National wait in uncertainty while the battle wages on.

Marie-Laure stays in her room with the model of the city, unsure what to do. While tracing the model of the town with her hand, she releases the miniature version of the house where she lives with a hidden catch, opens it with a series of secret twists, and a teardrop-shaped stone the size of a pigeon’s egg falls into her hand. She whispers her father’s name. The walls start to shake.

In the cellar under the hotel, Werner mans the radio that communicates with another upstairs, two other anti-aircraft companies in the town, and ground troops across the river. Staff sergeant Frank Volkheimer and Bernd, the engineer, are with him as the battle intensifies. Werner thinks of his sister, Jutta, and memories of his childhood.

Bombardment continues while Marie-Laure hides under the bed and her great-uncle is held in Fort National. Werner is in cellar when the electricity goes off.

Need to Know: This section establishes a number of important facts, themes, and symbols, including the wartime setting, the theme of darkness and light, Marie-Laure’s scale model of the town that is also a secret hiding place for a stone, Werner’s ease with radios and his familial bonds, and the parallel narratives of the two main characters, connected by the war and the seaside town, yet separate.

One: 1934

Chapters: Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle; Zollverein; Key Pound; Radio; Take Us Home; Something Rising; Light; Our Flag Flutters Before Us; Around the World in Eighty Days; The Professor; Sea of Flames; Open Your Eyes; Fade; The Principles of Mechanics; Rumors; Bigger Faster Brighter; Mark of the Beast; Good Evening. Or Heil Hitler if You Prefer.; Bye-bye, Blind Girl; Making Socks; Flight; Herr Siedler; Exodus

In this section, the novel flashes back ten years. Marie-Laure is a 6-year-old Parisian girl who is rapidly going blind with congenital cataracts. Shortly before losing her sight completely, she takes a children’s tour of the National Museum of Natural History where her father works as the locksmith. The tour includes the Gallery of Mineralogy, and, upon leaving, the group passes an iron door with a single keyhole. When asked, the museum warder tells the children that there are a series of thirteen successively smaller locked doors protecting the Sea of Flames, a priceless blue diamond with a red core that is said to have miraculous powers. According to legend, the stone’s keeper lives forever, but misfortunes befall all those he or she loves. The curse can be broken only by throwing the stone into the sea. Marie-Laure wonders why it isn’t simply thrown in the sea.

During this same time period, 7-year-old Werner and his younger sister, Jutta, grow up in a German orphanage run by Frau Elena. The orphanage is located in a poor coal mining complex outside Essen, a town that is close to economic collapse, and whose inhabitants are largely miners working in terrible conditions. When he is 8 years old, Werner finds a broken radio and teaches himself to repair it. When he picks up his first music broadcast, he feels his world has changed, as do Jutta and Frau Elena. He quickly becomes an expert at repairing radio receivers, despite his young age. Slowly, the economy and quality of life seem to be improving in their community, but against the backdrop are the first signs of Nazi nationalism.

After Marie-Laure completely loses her sight, she spends a brief period disorientated but, after time, begins to accompany her father to work at the museum where he oversees the key pound with thousands of keys to open the estimated 12,000 locks in the complex. She studies braille and goes on rounds with her father. Through her sense of touch, she begins to discover the wonders of the natural world through the wealth of exhibits in the museum.

Marie Laure’s father carves an exact replica model of the neighborhood where they live, and insists she memorize the landmarks and layout by touch. After a year, he challenges her to lead them home from a nearby park based on what she knows from the model. After months of failed attempts, the correspondence between the model and the real world begins to make sense and she succeeds, leading them home.

Marie-Laure and Werner have their horizons opened at the same time by two different events: she is given a copy of Around the World in 80 Days in braille for her 8th birthday, along with the annual puzzle box her father builds, while Werner comes across a mesmerizing and fascinating French broadcast that is part philosophy and part science, which he and Jutta begin to listen to each night.

When Marie-Laure is 10, she hears rumors that the Sea of Flames will soon be taken from its vault and displayed. She is worried about the curse, despite her father’s skepticism and the reassurances of Dr. Geffard, a specialist in mollusks at the museum and Marie-Laure’s friend. She is curious about a secretive project in the Gallery of Mineralogy her father has begun under orders of the director. Marie-Laure’s father completes his mysterious project, but the diamond does not go on display. She celebrates her 11th birthday with a 13-step puzzle box and a copy of part one of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in braille, as word spreads around Paris that the Germans will soon invade. There are signs of the impending invasion in shops and homes, though Marie-Laure’s father continues to insist it won’t happen.

Meanwhile, Werner is forced to join the Hitler Youth with the rising tide of the Nazi party and local anti-Semitism. Despite his love for mathematics and his gift for mechanics, he knows his future is in the coal mines. As his 15th birthday approaches, he despairs at the thought of giving up everything he loves for a backbreaking life of manual labor. Jutta secretly writes to the French professor to tell him they no longer hear his broadcasts, which are illegal under the Nazi regime, and reprimands Werner for not paying attention to what is happening in the world outside mathematics and fixing radios, telling him that she has listened to a broadcast about Germany dropping bombs on Paris.

Back in Paris, the museum starts to ship its collections to safe places. Marie-Laure’s father is working nonstop, and Marie-Laure is hearing many rumors about the impending war. She receives the second half of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for her 14th birthday, but her father is too busy to make a puzzle box. Shortly afterwards, the first bombs fall on Paris and Marie-Laure and her father head to the train station with a few possessions to flee the city. When no trains arrive, they travel by foot to Evreux to meet a man named Monsieur Giannot, who the museum director has promised will help them. Marie-Laure’s father is carrying a stone that looks like the Sea of Flames, but he is not sure if he has the real diamond or one of the three decoys which have been made and sent out in different directions from Paris.

Werner is summoned to local Nazi officer Rudolph Siedler’s house to fix his radio, and it is the first time he has contact with the sumptuous way of life of the privileged. Siedler promises to write a letter of recommendation to a recruiting board in Essen to send Werner to a school for boys gifted in science and mechanics. When Werner returns to the orphanage, he is struck by the misery. After everyone is asleep, he crushes his homemade but illegal radio, which is both a betrayal of Jutta and a way of not sabotaging his dreams of attending the private school.

Need to Know: This section provides the background for the rest of novel. Readers are introduced to Werner and Marie-Laure, and the stage is set for their roles in the war. The Sea of Flames—the cursed diamond—is one of the most important plot devices in the novel, as is Werner’s gift with radios, which changes the course of his life and forges the tenuous connection between his story and that of Marie-Laure.

Two: 8 August 1944

Chapters: Saint-Malo; Number 4 rue Vauborel; Hotel of Bees; Down Six Flights; Trapped

As t...