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

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a novel filled with despair, death, aspirations, fear, and fearlessness. It revolves around WWII, in Nazi Germany, the concentration young camps for boy soldiers, and two teenagers who struggle throughout their period of life as well as the people around them. The main lynchpins of this book are Marie-Laure, and Werner, they go in and out of trials and tribulations as well as happiness. Terror is one of the most important things to a human because they are fearful. The citizens of Nazi Germany were in a constant state of unknowing, that’s the affect the War had, the fear of not knowing if their young boy is going to get sent to a concentration camp with Hitler. The citizens of Nazi Germany has been petrified when Hitler made his grand appearance, then the citizens warmed up to him.

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

“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.

“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.

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.

Within his book, Anthony Doerr focused on two main characters, Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig. Marie-Laure was a blind French girl who lived in Paris with her father, who was one of the only people who treated her as a normal person and considered her disability an obstacle she could be able to conquer. He helped her develop skills to manage her condition in various ways such as making her wooden models of their neighborhood to be able to navigate the streets, and teaching her braille. Marie-Laure was very dependent on her father and his assistance, and when they moved to Saint-Malo where he was arrested and taken to a German prison, Marie-Laure was left hopeless and devastated. She began helping her great uncle, who she lived with, and his housekeeper, Madame Manec, with the French resistance group they were organizing.

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 title of this book is called All The Light We Cannot See, the ‘light’ is a reference to the light that we literally can’t see, like the (radio) wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition, the wavelengths are also a metaphorical suggestion to the realities of World War II. There are so many stories about World War II that have been buried and light hasn’t been shed on those perspectives of the war. This is the light that we don’t see. Overall, I think that this story was about shining light onto the parts of World War II that we don’t hear about because it’s been buried by the more popular perspectives of World War

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.

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.

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.

Elie Wiesel’s mesmerizing book, Night, is a retelling of his own teenage experience of the Jewish holocaust. As Wiesel recounts these chilling events, a thread of darkness runs throughout the story. A central question of doubt versus hope arises as the young boy questions his faith, the goodness of people, and the justice of God. Wiesel uses many literary devices to take the reader on an emotional journey. His use of personification and metaphor make this book nothing short of gripping causing the reader to experience brief hopes so quickly destroyed by the unthinkable.

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.

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.