ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

-ANTHONY
-ANTHONY DOERR
DOERR

Characters:
Marie-Laure Leblanc
Werner Pfennig
Reinhold von Rumpel
Daniel Leblanc
Etienne Leblanc
Madame Manec
Frau Elena
Jutta Pfennig
Frederick
Professor Hauptmann
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anthony Doerr is the author of All the Light We Cannot See, winner
of the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the Alex Award, and a #1 New
York Times bestseller. He is also the author of the story
collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About
Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won five O.
Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young
Lions Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim
Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio,
Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.
THEME/PLOT:

• War. The brutality of war is a

driving force that shapes the fates of
individuals and corrupts people into
betraying their principles. Marie-
Laure, Werner, and Daniel Leblanc
all had hopes and dreams for their
lives.
 CHARACTERISATION:
A blind French girl and one of the novel's protagonists. She is sheltered but also
brave, self-reliant, and resourceful. Marie-Laure grows up during a challenging
time in history and experiences personal tragedies, but she never loses a sense of
wonder in the world around her.

Werner Pfennig is a young, intelligent German boy, and one of the two
protagonists of All the Light We Cannot See.

Marie Laure’s father, Daniel LeBlanc, is selflessly devoted to his daughter—

indeed, he spends long hours teaching her Braille and crafting elaborate models
of Paris (and later Saint-Malo) to teach her how to walk through
 IMPORTANT ASPECTS:

ortant aspects of All the Light We Cannot See: First, the novel is an exploration of the tragedy of w
through individual stories, the novel also offers glimpses into the larger-scale horrors of WWII.A
See tells the story of two teenagers during World War II (WWII), one a blind girl in Nazi-occupied
German orphan boy pressed into service by the Nazi army.
 TECHNIQUES:
the French Resistance could be beneficial to students, who might be unfamiliar with that aspect of WWII. For help visua
story, students could plot the locations on a map as they read. To expand the activity, have students create a timeline of e
d Werner.

ee offers a view of World War II from a fascinating perspective. Its two teenage protagonists are on opposite sides of the
heir separate stories progress toward each other until they intersect at a crucial moment. Anthony Doerr’s historical fictio
of humanity through these extraordinary characters.
 REVIEW:

piece of luck for anyone with a long plane journey or beach holiday ahead. It is such a page-turn
n which the talent of the storyteller surmounts stylistic inadequacies and ultimately defies one's b

e story, which is set in Germany and France before and during the German occupation of France
teeped in the favourite books of childhood: Marie-Laure is a little blind French girl, motherless,
of Green Gables. Werner Pfennig and his sister Jutta are orphans in the German mining town of
with white hair, like snow, whose presence is "like being in the room with a feather". Werner ma
gift for science, and the intricacies of radios in particular. He can fix anything.
 RECOMMENDATION:

These characteristics are things that I think many teenagers, of any era,
can relate to. This has been one of my favorite reads this year, and I
would highly recommend reading this novel.