Character Analysis Of Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See

In the exceptional novel All the Light We Cannot See, author Anthony Doerr, tells the story of two young adults whom had to experience life during World War II.

Elie Wiesel once said, “Even in darkness, it is possible to create light.” this helped Elie Wiesel in a morale-boosting way to survive a terrible tragedy, the holocaust. However in the short story, “The breakaway” It’s not justin's thoughts that restored faith in himself, it was his big sister that came down to visit the family from college. In this essay you will see the difference in tone and imagery between Elie Wiesel’s novel, “night” compared to the short story, “The Breakaway”. In the novel, “Night” by Elie Wiesel and the short story “The Breakaway” by /unknown/

In “All the Light We Cannot See”, Anthony Doerr introduces the reader to many characters the two main being Werner and Marie-Laure. Each characters has their own personality, struggles, and perspective on the war. “He sees the interlaced ironwork of Zollverein, the fire breathing mills, men teeming out of elevator shafts like ants… Without hesitating Werner steps off the edge of the platform” (Doerr, 116). Werner came from an orphanage in a German coal mining city where he lost his father and would have the same destiny, working in the mines.Werner knew that his only way out of the mines was to become part of the Hitler Youth program, which he did due to his bravery after initially being suggested for his knowledge of technology.

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.

Anthony Doerr proves the individual writing style in his characters development, symbols, and conflict in the novel “All The Light We Cannot See”. In his unique was he creates the characters who are believable and relatable to readers, yet unordinary, with the struggles and suffering a real person would do. This book brings an inscredible amount of feelings and inspiration for life to truly value the life and remember that the huge price was paid for the peace in which most of the today’s world

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.

The chaos and destruction that the Nazi’s are causing are not changing the lives of only Jews, but also the lives of citizens in other countries. Between Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are crucial to the survival of principle characters. Ironically, in both stories there is a foreseen future, that both seemed to be ignored.

The novel All The Light We Cannot See, was written by Anthony Doerr. The novel was set during World War Two era and features two parallel stories with characters from opposite points of view. Doers tells the story of how both characters grow up through adversity and how they overcome their personal struggles. Marie-Laure is one of the main characters. She goes blind and has to learn how to navigate life alone after he father leaves her in the care of her Uncle Etienne. Werner, the second main character, overcame being an orphan and makes a life decision based upon his worst fear. Both characters, though living separate but parallel lives, share similar life experiences that are connected with numerous symbolic objects. Throughout the novel Doerr uses symbolic objects to create a connection for the reader between Werner and Marie-Laure. Doerr’s use of this method to bridge the characters together is done so with the use of several items such as the radio, shells and mollusks, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the Sea of Flames.

In the beginning of the bible, the world was dark. Then God created light in order to make it brighter. However, when the God is not here to protect the light, Night overtook. It is a time of darkness. It is also a place where people cannot see and help each other. Because of the faith in God, the darkness, hopeless of Night, and the period of Night, Elle Wiesel’s famous short novel is called “Night”, which is very significant for Elle Wiesel as well as the Jews during World War II.

As Night comes in, nothing can be perceived for what they evidently are. The sense of “sight” is obstructed; it creates a different understanding of such tragedies for an individual. The conscience is clouded, for the darkness—Night, conceals the grief, afflictions, and senseless massacres. Even those who are targeted are left unseeing. When Wiesel and the others were transferred to a smaller ghetto, “No one was praying for the night to pass quickly…[The Jews] condemned to the same fate—still unknown” (21). The people prayed, but didn’t know what they were praying about. The Jews in Sighet has lived in oblivion till one year before the war ends, when millions had already perished. The community isn’t enlightened about the circumstances in neighboring areas. In a sense, they too, had their backs turned to the deaths that occurred. Wiesel feels that Night has left humanity with the absence of clarity, the darkness of it has robbed them of their best sense. The world has been kept in the dark, for they let this happen for several years before finally stepping in. Night is a heavy black curtain that obscures; it devoids the world of moments where light does not shed upon life (with light being depicted often as knowledge). Night condones more tragedies than

One of the many emotions attached to All the Light We Cannot See is fear. From the very beginning of the novel readers were able to identify this in events such as, Marie’s early years of being blind. As the story continued, fear was a huge factor in the war, and even after the conflicts, fear still took over the remaining characters. Especially in Werner’s younger sister, Jutta, who lived to carry a son and marry a man. Fear was particularly present when Jutta is in a train with her son and a man joins them. Her reaction was “he sits beside her and lights a cigarette. Jutta clutches her bag between her knees; she is certain that he was wounded in the war, that he will try to start a conversation, that het deficient French will betray her.

“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial, I believe we are lost” (Remarque 123). World War I is a tragic event that occurred in 1914 to 1918. Paul Baumer and the rest of the soldiers in the novel of “All Quiet in the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque are lost; they are broken from the fist World War, they don’t know anything aside from War, and they have lost their innocence during the years of maturation. When the young men heard about the War, they were excited, and full of life, they thought they were going on an adventure.

It is a common in many books to cloak ignorance in darkness and shroud knowledge in light. It can be taken further than that of course: darkness can be both deeply comforting and extraordinarily terrifying, and light can be warmly brilliant and painfully harsh. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, uses the various combinations and contradictions of ignorance and knowledge and choice in humanity to build a startlingly vivid representation of the horrors of the world in World War II for two insignificant children. Told from the perspectives of a blind French girl, Marie, and a Nazi German boy, Werner, Doerr conveys themes of fate, duty, and free will of an average person. This book did not, however, directly change my life with its stunning representation of World War II.

“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.