“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr is a Pulitzer Award winner that was published in the year of 2014. Throughout the novel, Marie-Laure is faced with blindness, World War Two, along with many other personal issues she faces throughout the novel. Another major character of the novel, is Werner, who along with his sister Jutta are both orphans. Because of the fact that both Werner and Jutta are orphans, Werner decides to help the two of them out by becoming part of Hitler’s Youth. Throughout the novel, the setting changes quite frequently due to the change in the novel that both the characters face. A key point into understanding the frequent setting change is the use of changing point of views that the author has adapted to the story…
The book, All The Light We Cannot See By Anthony Doerr, is often described as a quite riveting novel to read. The book highlights many of the hardships which people experienced during World War II. The story takes place in Saint-Malo, France. Saint-Malo is a first described as peaceful and serene, but later on known as the epitome of destruction. The author showcases the epic destruction of civilizations throughout the book by using many unique writing techniques to engage the reader’s attention. To begin with, The author depicts the events in the novel through the perspective of a physically blind girl, Marie Laure, and a figuratively blind boy, Werner Pfennig. The book manages to effectively explain the life stories of the two main characters,…
In the book All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Werner starts to develop a better realization of what the intentions of the institute are when it comes to teaching the students, and becomes less loyal to what the institute has taught him because of this. Werner starts to realize the methods that are being used by the institute in order to promote brutality. Werner also realizes that the institute is manipulating him into using his intelligence in order to do vicious things in favor of the Nazis. As werner becomes more aware of what is happening, he starts to disobey the violent morals he has been taught despite the danger that could result from this.…
Although at times it was hard to follow what was exactly happening in the book. I felt like the book jumped around a lot because each chapter was a different event that happened throughout the year. I didn’t know when the events occurred so at times it was confusing. In addition, the book was older so it was hard to make connections with the book and my everyday life.…
The novel All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, is an intricately written story about two young adults during World War II. The two main characters Werner and Marie-Laure come from extremely different lives. Marie-Laure is a blind 16 year old girl who lives in a nice house in France with her dad. Werner is an orphan who lives with Jutta, his sister, who is the only person in his family he knows of. This book tells the story of how these characters that come from seemingly unrelated worlds cross paths in the most unexpected way. These characters are brought together by an item that plays a crucial role in this story; the radio. The radio is an item that plays a major role in Werners life. Although it may seem like just another piece…
Life is full of searches; searches that heal the soul, and searches that tear it apart. In the book, All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Werner, a young, German boy of the age 13, lives in a Children’s House with his sister and other children who’s parents have deceased due to working in the mines. Werner is very smart for his age. His passion is radios. He goes house to house, working on radios of all kinds for people of all classes. Because of his education and knowledge, he has been accepted into an academy for Hitler Youth called the National Political Institute of Education #6. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is 12 when her and her father, a locksmith at the Paris Museum of Natural History, sojourn to Saint-Malo to get away from the bombings taking place in Paris. Marie-Laure went blind when she was six years old. At the time she lost her vision, her father had created a miniature of their neighborhood to guide her as she ventures around town. Within the pages of this book, I feel as though a locksmith searches for the key to protection and future for his blind daughter, Marie-Laure searches for meaning and understanding of the world around her, and Werner searches for a way to please his sister and himself as he Heils Hitler.…
The only aspect that bothers me a bit is that the story seems a bit jumbled; events that spread years apart are put together in one page, and then a few paragraphs later, the story flies back to third grade memories.I find myself desperately trying to reorient myself, but sometimes I simply cannot and have to reread the whole page.…
In All the Light We Cannot See, the two main characters of the story were the audacious Marie- Laure LeBlanc, a blind girl who lived in Paris with her loving father, and…
Imagine waking up in the morning, opening your eyes and being greeted not with the familiarity of your bedroom ceiling, but with darkness. Naturally you’d be startled, but once you got past the initial shock, you’d be able conjure up an image of your bedroom from your imagination, clumsily bump your way through the room, and generally navigate through the house, right? Of course you would. The blind are not helpless, and can sometimes “see” more than we can. But wait- if you can’t see, how did you know where your bed was? Where the wall was? Or the door? Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See, uses Marie-Laure, a young blind girl, to help illustrate one of the main themes in his book -that light and substance only truly exists in your head- with an extensive use of metaphors and descriptions.…
This book is organized like most other novels in chronological order with chapters and is orientated in third person. It was very readable and honestly an enjoyable read. The only flaw I see is the amount of dialogue that is in this book. John Allyn…
In the book, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, many of the characters stories can seem fascinating to the modern reader. Marie’s story deals with her blindness, and how her father attempts to assist her by making a model of the neighborhood they used to live in, making puzzle boxes for her to solve on her birthdays, and even traveling with her on his back through the French countryside to Saint-Malo when the Germans attacked their town. Werner’s story, which is quite fascinating, deals with the grim, bleak, and cloudy lifestyle that he used to live in when he was an orphan. Eventually, through his innovative ingenuity, he manages to impress a German military official, and gets caught in the brutal trap that is the Wehrmacht. Werner…
The most prominent theme of the novel highlights war. Doerr’s work of fiction uses physical symbols to showcase the effects of war on people, of resistance to oppression, and the effort of citizens trying to maintain normality, creating a whole better understanding for readers about the outcomes of war. Historians, philosophers, and writers alike can attest to the human struggle to follow a certain moral code; history shows a constant rift between what humans claim they should do and what they actually do. If this rift did not exist, many a crisis and war could be averted, but humanity would not be its beautifully flawed self. In the novel All the Light We Cannot See, Doerr is raved over for “masterfully and knowledgeably recreating the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers” (Hooper 23). However, the use of literary devices in the novel reflects a message deeper than that of just another war-time story. Doerr utilizes the war setting as a means of further exploring the nature of humanity in a distinct context. He does not define the characters by war; he defines the characters and gives them a war to respond…
Alternating between three culturally distinct narrators, Boyden grasps the complex perspectives and factors within the story, as presented by Christophe, a Jesuit missionary, Snow Falls, an Iroquois teen, and Bird, a Huron warrior. The National Post describes the narration as a "powerful and convincing depiction of both faiths”, referring to the Aboriginal and European narrators. Boyden tells the story of conflict between tribes that is ignited following a series of killings as well as the kidnapping of Snow Falls. Sent from New France to convert the natives, Christophe travels with Bird and the Huron tribe. The Orenda is filled with action and scenes of brutality (Nurse). Donna Bailey Nurse describes it as “very violent work, full of the most grotesque descriptions of ritualized torture that I’ve ever…
To be blind can mean many things. The effects of those who are not literally blind, but who cannot see through the haze of perspective concepts developed by society, such as the issue of discrimination or social status, are often negative and cause misguided behavioral actions by individuals. Authors, such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, use the motif of blindness that makes their literary characters prejudice, and indicates a lack of understanding which binds them to set fates of death, downfall, and destruction, outlining the effect that divided society has on an individual. In Thomas C. Fosters novel, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, he talks about the reasons behind authors purposes of choosing to use blindness as a long lasting motive in their works of literature: “Clearly the author wants to emphasize other levels of sight and blindness beyond the physical.…
In the story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator is overwhelmed with disappointment and misunderstanding in his own life. He doesn’t see all the beauty and creativity in the world, but merely goes through the motions of life without actively living. Blindness is an underlying theme in this story, but not only as a physicality, but a social handicap. The narrator may be more capable of sight than the blind man, but he knows nothing of the descriptive illustration of life. It is through the blind mans probing of the narrator, that he finally discovers how closed off and shielded he has been. We can see a revelation in the narrator, and a transformation in his mindset.…