NAME : Andika Putra

NIM : 200441049
LECTURER : Dwi Indra Apriliandari, M.Pd
LECTURE : English Literature

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

By Anthony Doerr

Why examine this novel

All the Light We Cannot See is a novel by American-born writer, Anthony Doerr, published
by Scribner on May 6, 2014. This novel was awarded the Pulitzer award for Fiction 2014 and
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction 2015. The depiction of the setting in this
novel, in general in the second world war. The storyline in this novel explains the
development of two human stories with the opposite background but eventually restricted
in an event.

Marxisme approach
All The Light We Cannot See based on an event in history. The background in the 1940s, this
novel tells of Marie Laure, a blind teen since the age of six years and Werner, an orphaned
who later became part of Hitler Youth. Anthony Doerr revealed that one of the key power of
the Nazis is his education. They make the system of education so as to every boy began
from teenagers (aged 14-18 years) have been presented by its ideology.

 Childhood Before the War

Marie-Laure lives in Paris with her father, a locksmith for the Museum of Natural History.
She goes blind because of cataracts, and he helps her cope with blindness by buying her
Jules Verne adventure novels written in Braille and by building her a wooden replica of their
neighborhood so she can learn to navigate it blind:
 Marie-Laure since a small child is in his training his way of surviving the drawback
and his father holds a very dangerous task with the permaca gem that he guys by his
father.

Werner grows up in the countryside of Zollverein, Germany, together with his sister, Jutta,
in an orphanage run by Frau Elena. Werner is inquisitive and gifted with science and
mechanics. He discovers a broken radio and fixes it; he and Jutta use the radio to listen to a
French professor deliver broadcasts about science:
 Grow into a gifted child then then joined the Nazi.

 New Homes and the Onset of War

The man to whom Marie-Laure’s father is supposed to deliver the Sea of Flames has fled to
London, so Marie-Laure and her father continue to her great-uncle Etienne’s house in Saint-
Malo and begin living there. Her father builds her a model of Saint-Malo and hides the Sea
of Flames inside the replica of Etienne’s house. The Germans confiscate all the radios in
Saint-Malo, but Etienne keeps one hidden in his attic. Marie-Laure’s father is summoned to
return to the museum, but on his way he is arrested and sent to a prison camp in Germany.
The environment at Schulpforta is brutal for Werner, whose only friend is Frederick, a gentle
boy who loves birds. Frederick is singled out for punishment, especially after he refuses to
participate in killing an enemy prisoner. He is beaten so badly that he nearly dies and is sent
home, his mind permanently damaged. Meanwhile, Werner’s technical genius is recognized
by the science teacher, Dr. Hauptmann, who trains Werner to calculate the location of radio
broadcasts using trigonometry.
 Marie Laure and his father chose to move to his uncle’s house, then his father was
catching and put into prison until it never returned. While the more role in the Nazis,
then his friend named Fredrick almost dead beaten for disbelieving the command.

 Joining the War Effort

Etienne’s housekeeper, Madame Manec, organizes a group of women to fight for the French
resistance against Nazi occupation. She tries to recruit Etienne to use his radio in the
resistance movement, but he refuses because of the danger. Madame Manec dies of
pneumonia, and after mourning her loss, Etienne and Marie-Laure decide to take up her
resistance efforts. Marie-Laure receives loaves of bread from Madame Ruelle that have slips
of paper with Allied intelligence baked inside. Etienne broadcasts the information on these
slips using his radio. When Madame Ruelle learns the Allies are coming on D-Day, she asks
Etienne to chart the locations of Nazi anti-aircraft guns and broadcast them. He tries but
gets arrested.
As the German war effort becomes more desperate, Dr. Hauptmann lies and claims that
Werner is 18 instead of 16 so Werner can be sent into the military. Werner joins a special
team that hunts down anti-German radio broadcasts and kills the broadcasters. His team is
called to Saint-Malo to locate the origin of one such illegal broadcast, which Werner
recognizes as reminiscent of the French professor’s broadcast he listened to in his youth.
Instead of telling his team about the broadcast, Werner locates it himself, finds Marie-Laure,
and falls in love with her.
 The effort helps the preservation of Marie Laure to the nazi that is tipped on him with
Werner who made Werner in love.

 The Bombing of Saint-Malo

This piece of the story, which is broken up into narrative sections that fit chronologically
with the novel’s plot progression, depicts the characters alone with their thoughts. The
Allies begin bombing Saint-Malo. Werner takes shelter in the basement of a hotel; bombs
cause the hotel to collapse, trapping Werner and Volkheimer, Werner’s team leader. Marie-
Laure hides in Etienne’s cellar until the bombing is over. She climbs to the third floor for
water and hears German officer von Rumpel, who desperately wants to locate the Sea of
Flames, enter the house looking for the diamond. She hides in the attic, which has a secret
entrance von Rumpel cannot find.
After days in the attic, Marie-Laure begins broadcasting. Werner has managed to fix his
radio, and he and Volkheimer hear her reading. At one point she pauses and whispers, “He
is here,” alerting Werner to the fact that she is in danger. Tired of waiting to be discovered,
Marie-Laure begins playing loud music. Volkheimer hears the music through the radio, and
it inspires him to risk his life blasting a way out of the hotel basement rubble where he and
Werner are trapped. Werner goes to Etienne’s house and rescues Marie-Laure by killing von
Rumpel. He helps her escape the city after putting the Sea of Flames and the model of
Etienne’s house in an ocean grotto. Werner and Marie-Laure part ways. Marie-Laure
reunites with Etienne while Werner is taken prisoner by the Allies and grows ill. He
deliriously wanders into a minefield, triggers an explosion, and is killed.
 The Warner’s sacrifice saves Marie Laure who made him to be killed, but his business
could be able to back up the Nazi army and managed to kill Von Rumpel.

 After the War

Jutta is in Berlin when Russian soldiers arrive, and three of them rape her. Marie-Laure and
Etienne move to Paris, where Marie-Laure begins school. Decades later, an organization
gives Werner’s belongings to Volkheimer, who brings them to Jutta. Among them is the
model of Etienne’s house. Jutta goes to Saint-Malo to learn about her brother’s last days
alive, and she recognizes that Etienne’s house matches the model. A neighbor puts her in
touch with Marie-Laure, who now works at the Museum of Natural History.
Jutta meets Marie-Laure, tells her that Werner died, and gives her the model house. Marie-Laure
realizes that Werner must have retrieved it from the grotto after they parted ways. When she opens
it, she finds the key to the grotto gate. She wonders what he did with the Sea of Flames; although
she has no way of knowing it, the narrator reveals that Werner left the diamond in the grotto.Many
years later, Marie-Laure goes to a park with her grandson, where she reflects on her life and loss.
 Marie Laure returns to Paris, starts new life again and go to school there.

The Conclusion
As one of the Pulitzer prize winners for fiction, this novel by Anthony doerr is a well-read
book for those who want to dig deep into the phenomenon of world war and feel the
emotional resistance of character and events in the story. It is highly recommended for
readers who love figurative language, especially deep image and symbolism. No, all the light
we cannot see is one of the best works of those American writers.