Anthony Doerr 's All The Light We Can Not See

“Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other.” - Eric Burdon. The theme of good versus evil can be applied to almost every novel but in different aspects. In the novel, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, plays a good and evil side at the same time. This book is in the time period of WWII in Paris, France following a blind girl and an intellectual boy. The girl, Marie-Laure, is our good side of the story, for instance, always wanting to help her father with what she can, listening and knowing what the right thing to do is, and taking action when needed, adding to her blindness to not let that stop her. The German boy we follow, Werner, he is wanting to help others as well, but not for the right reasons, he lets the evil, in this case, the Nazis, take control of him and use him for his brain.

I chose All the Light We Cannot See because I’m really interested in reading,or learning,anything about World War II, so it was a perfect pick for me since the book was based around the World War II time period. I must admit, the book was extremely long and I did have a hard time forcing myself to pick up the book and continue reading it. It felt like it would never end. Fortunately, the author’s writing style was really descriptive and you can easily see whatever the character saw, or heard whatever the characters heard. The fact that I could easily see the cities Anthony Doerr described,or hear the oceans he made the characters hear, really helped me continue reading the book until I finished it.

In war, both violence and fear revokes a soldier’s humanity. These elements of war cause a person to shut down their emotional instincts, which causes the soldiers to mature rapidly by taking innocence along with joy and happiness in life. Through the experiences that the soldiers encounter, their humanity is compromised. Thus, as war strips soldiers of their innocence, they start to become disconnected from themselves and others. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque illustrates the negative effects war has on a soldier’s humanity, through his use of Paul’s books and the potato pancakes by revealing the soldiers loss of emotion that causes them to become detached from society. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. Likewise the potato pancakes reveal Paul’s emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.

In Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See , a blind girl named Marie-Laure LeBlanc lives with her father, Daniel LeBlanc, in Paris. When Marie-Laure was a little girl, she went on a children’s tour of the museum where her father worked. On the tour, the tour guide talks about this stone called the Sea of Flames and it was said that the keeper of the stone would live forever, but as long as he kept it, all the people that he loved would face many problems. When she is twelve years old, the Nazis occupy Paris, so Marie-Laure and her father flee the city, with the Sea of Flames, to go live with her great uncle and aunt, Etienne LeBlanc and Madame Manec in Saint-Malo. A forty-one year old man named Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, is very

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel written by Erich Maria Remarque that takes place in World War I. This novel is about an eighteen-year-old German boy that enlists with his classmates to the war. All of the boys that enlisted are very excited but they have no idea what war is really like. Throughout the years of fighting, Paul realizes that war is his life. He never really had a life after school so once the war is over he will have nothing to go back to. Paul thinks that war is horrible but that is all he has. During this novel, Paul experiences lots of brutal deaths. He watches his friends die and he can't do anything about it. He also sees young men risking their lives for their country. In this essay, I will go over the brutality of war using similes and personification quotes from All Quiet on the Western Front.

In the incredible book, All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, the reader follows Paul Baumer, a young man who enlisted in the war. The reader goes on a journey and watches Paul and his comrades face the sheer brutality of war. In this novel, the author tries to convey the fact that war should not be glorified. Through bombardment, gunfire, and the gruesome images painted by the author, one can really understand what it would have been like to serve on the front lines in the Great War. The sheer brutality of the war can be portrayed through literary devices such as personification, similes, and metaphors.

From two different perspectives of the war, the author of this book showed that, depending on location and timing, everyone can be affected differently by warfare. It followed the story of two children who grew up on opposite sides of World War II. When their paths crossed, they developed feelings for one another, disregarding the fact that their historical circumstances placed them on opposing sides of the war. In the book All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr depicted how internal principles were able to overpower external pressures.

The Great War, also known as World War I, is a defining moment in Europe’s history. Its aftermath consists of the demolition of Germany’s economy, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the loss of an entire generation of young men who were sent into combat. All Quiet on the Western Front chronicles the experiences of Paul Baumer, a 19-year old student who volunteers for the military during World War I along with his classmates Muller and Kropp. They are compelled to enlist by Kantorek, their fiercely patriotic but misguided schoolmaster. Paul’s life in the military is told in short entries that reveal the reality of war: horrifying battles, violence, alienation, emotional indifference. His accounts of war are personal and emotional, and the bleak tone

Erich Maria Remarque explores the idea that war can destroy a generation of men physically, mentally and emotionally in his anti-war novel titled All Quiet on the Western Front. The author uses first-person narrative through a young German soldier named Paul Baumer to illustrate the terrorizing and difficult lives of those who served in World War Ⅰ. Baumer is one of the several students who voluntarily join the army along with his classmates, for they were driven to by their teacher, Kantorek who stresses how it is their duty to protect and fight for their country Germany. Remarque highlights the fact that Baumer is an inexperienced, innocent, young man who faces the constant struggle of fighting to stay alive at such an early age. In Erich Maria Remarque's classic anti-war novel, the author uses diction, explicit imagery and first-person narration to illustrate the realistic portrayal of the horrors of war and argues against its necessity.

All the light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, chronicles the lives and relationship between Marie and Werner, two children who grew up in France and Germany. The society around them forces discriminatory ideals that cloud their perception of the world, but they find its meaning through their own self-definition. In this, they are both guided by a single radio and the message and legacy that it contains. Throughout the book, the author isolated the two characters, but also created subtle connections between the two. The most important of which would be the radio. It created a bond between the two where they learned from each other’s experiences and struggles. All the Light We Cannot See recreates a new picture of the world by contrasting the two separate journeys taken by Marie- Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig to gain that image, which is guided by the power of a radio and the message it contains, ultimately leading to the meeting of the two characters that officially forms an image of the world where one’s actions are valued more than one’s physical features.

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, is a classic anti-war novel about the personal struggles and experiences encountered by a group of young German soldiers as they fight to survive the horrors of World War One. Remarque demonstrates, through the eyes of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier, how the war destroyed an entire generation of men by making them incapable of reintegrating into society because they could no longer relate to older generations, only to fellow soldiers.

Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It is a story, not of Germans, but of men, who even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. The entire purpose of this novel is to illustrate the vivid horror and raw nature of war and to change the popular belief that war has an idealistic and romantic character.  The story centers on Paul Baümer, who enlists in the German army with glowing enthusiasm.  In the course of war, though, he is consumed by it and in the end is "weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope"  (Remarque page #).

In the words of Otto Von Bismarck, “Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.” Many of the preceding war novels to All Quiet on the Western Front, misrepresented or overlooked the anguish of war, in favor of more resplendent ideals such as glory, honor, or nationalism. The predominant issue of All Quiet on the Western Front is the terrible atrocities of war. The reality that is portrayed in the novel is that there was no glory or honor in this war, only a fierce barbarity that actually transformed the nature of human existence into irreparable, endless affliction, destroying the soldiers long before their deaths.

All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of Paul Baumer’s service as a soldier in the German army during World War I. Paul and his classmates enlist together, share experiences together, grow together, share disillusionment over the loss of their youth, and the friends even experience the horrors of death-- together. Though the book is a novel, it gives the reader

The air is full of darkness, and hope quickly is vanishing. People are searching for their sense of life once again, and the world is at combat. This is the framework in Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the Light We Cannot See. The storyline, set in France during World War 2, is a historical fiction based on two characters journey of living separate lives in the duration of the war and miraculously through fate meeting up to experience the struggles together in their own ways. The characters, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, an adventurous adaptive girl who was blind at the age of six, and Werner Pfennig, a young blond hair blue eyed boy who is known for being a prodigy when it comes to his engineering skills grow up through this novel in the duration of the war. The story consists of Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s personal experiences and thoroughly adheres to their every encounter, every earth rattling occurrence and their every conversation. In the novel, Doerr emphasizes the need to find a shining light, to find hope, to find inspiration in a time of darkness and disparity; he addresses the power and integrity one needs in a time of hardship for the whole world, and he beautifully writes a story on the moral struggle to decipher what is conscientiously acceptable.