Summary and Analysis of All the Light We Cannot See: Based on the Book by Anthony Doerr

Summary and Analysis of All the Light We Cannot See: Based on the Book by Anthony Doerr

by Worth Books
Summary and Analysis of All the Light We Cannot See: Based on the Book by Anthony Doerr

Summary and Analysis of All the Light We Cannot See: Based on the Book by Anthony Doerr

by Worth Books

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Overview

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.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781504044813
Publisher: Worth Books
Publication date: 03/21/2017
Series: Smart Summaries
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 30
Sales rank: 722,530
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

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Worth Books’ smart summaries get straight to the point and provide essential tools to help you be an informed reader in a busy world, whether you’re browsing for new discoveries, managing your to-read list for work or school, or simply deepening your knowledge. Available for fiction and nonfiction titles, these are the book summaries that are worth your time.
 

Read an Excerpt

Summary and Analysis of All the Light We Cannot See

Based on the Book by Anthony Doerr


By Worth Books

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4481-3



CHAPTER 1

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: SaintMalo; Number 4 rue Vauborel; Hotel of Bees; Down Six Flights; Trapped A s the bombing of Saint-Malo continues, Marie-Laure hides under her bed with the stone and the puzzle box house. The house is shaking and the city is on fire. Realizing she is too high up in the house, she begins to descend the stairs, making her way through the various fallen objects to the cellar. She is still carrying the stone and model house.

Werner wakes under rubble after having lost consciousness during the bombardment and is disoriented, temporarily deaf, and unsure of how much time has passed. Volkheimer shines his light on the collapsed corner of the cellar where the stairwell once was, uncovers Bernd under the rubble, then finds the bleeding, trapped Werner and tells him there is no way out.


Need to Know: The parallel story lines of Marie-Laure and Werner often cross during the novel, until they finally unite later in the book. Their similar experiences during the bombardment are an example of this narrative device.


Three: June 1940

Chapters: Château; Entrance Exam; Brittany; Madame Manec; You Have Been Called; Occuper; Don't Tell Lies; Etienne; Jungmänner; Vienna; The Boches; Hauptmann; Flying Couch; The Sum of Angles; The Professor; Perfumer; Time of the Ostriches; Weakest; Mandatory Surrender; Museum; The Wardrobe; Blackbird s; Bath; Weakest (#2); The Arrest of the Locksmith

Upon arriving in Evreux, Marie-Laure and her father find Giannot's house on fire; it was looted and he fled to London with the rest of the town's wealthy citizens. They continue on to Saint-Malo to stay with Marie-Laure's great-uncle Etienne who suffers from PTSD due to being gassed in the same battle that killed Marie-Laure's grandfather. There, they are welcomed by Madame Manec, Etienne's housekeeper, who tells them that Etienne has been living as a recluse for 20 years, though he stays informed of the outside world via his radio. Despite numerous attempts by Marie-Laure's father, there is no communication line open with Paris, so they settle in for their stay in SaintMalo.

Werner takes the exam for the National Political Institutes of Education, which he desperately wants to pass, though he still feels guilty about smashing the radio and betraying Jutta, who is not speaking to him. In a group of one hundred boys, twenty-six of whom are in his own age group, he runs, jumps, answers questions, and goes through raciological exams. The final test is jumping off a high platform onto a flag held by recruits. Others recruits are injured or cry in fear, but Werner thinks about a future in the mines and executes the jump perfectly, ending with "Heil Hitler!" Five days later he learns he has been admitted, to the muted response of Frau Elena and Jutta. On the day before his departure, Jutta tells him that he needs to take accountability for his choices and not simply do what everyone else is doing. Werner defends himself by saying that after he graduates, they will have a better life. She counters that he can lie to himself, but not to her.

After spending three days at her great-uncle's house in Saint-Malo, Marie-Laure follows a trail of seashells leading to her great-uncle's room. It is filled with radios and collections that recall those of the museum. They strike up a friendship, alternating days in which he reads to her from Darwin's The Voyage of the "Beagle" and days in which he withdraws. Meanwhile, her father continues to attempt to get word from Paris and begins building a model of Saint-Malo with manic intensity. The Germans invade and occupy the town, ordering the residents to surrender their firearms. Despite the deepening affection of both her great-uncle and Madame Manec, Marie-Laure is frustrated that her father will not let her leave the house and that they cannot return to Paris. To cope, she begins memorizing the layout of the house. She's beginning to understand that the Paris chapter of her life has ended and the Saint-Malo chapter has begun.

Werner arrives at the military-style Schulpforta school and meets Frederick, a gentle boy from Berlin who is passionate about birding; Frederick becomes Werner's only close friend. Any ethical doubts he has are silenced by the routine and the desire to fit in. He captures the attention of Hauptmann, his professor of technical sciences, who orders Werner to work in his lab each evening with the older Volkheimer as his guard. When he returns to the dormitory after his first night in the lab, Frederick tells him of having spotted a rare owl, but Werner is lost in his own fantasies of his future as a scientist.

The novel's main villain, Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel, is introduced for the first time. A gemologist, he is tasked with finding items from a 400-page wish list of treasures from Europe and Russia for a museum Hitler is planning on building in his hometown. When he comes across the story of the Sea of Flames in an antique book in Vienna's geological library, he decides to track it down. He visits the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, holding the museum's mineralogist and administrator and threatening their children until they take him to the vault where there is a custom-made wooden locked box, and, inside, a blue stone.

Etienne reveals that he and his brother had recorded a series of science programs for children before World War I and when he returned from the front after his brother's death, Etienne built a huge radio transmitter in the attic to play the ten recordings and Debussy's Clair de Lune, hoping in some way to reach his deceased brother. When the citizens of Saint-Malo are ordered to turn over their radio sets, Marie-Laure's father and Madame Manec pack up all of Etienne's radios while he is shut up in his dead brother's bedroom. They do not know about the transmitter in the attic, however, and Marie-Laure says nothing. Etienne and Marie-Laure move a heavy wardrobe to hide the attic door.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of All the Light We Cannot See by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Context,
Overview,
Cast of Characters,
Summary,
Character Analysis,
Themes and Symbols,
Direct Quotes and Analysis,
Trivia,
What's That Word?,
Critical Response,
About Anthony Doerr,
Author's Style,
For Your Information,
Bibliography,
Copyright,

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