The Importance of Sight : What the characters chose to see
Sight is arguably the most important motif present in the novel ‘All the Light We Cannot See’. In the novel, author Anthony Doerr uses the idea to better describe what the main characters, Marie-Laure and Werner see and did not see. He used ‘sight’ to create conflicts that the characters experience and binds the two stories together using the same idea. Doerr wrote about ‘sight’ both figuratively and literally in this novel to better explain the characters’ struggles.
In this novel Marie-Laure is a schoolgirl who loses her vision by the age of thirteen. In the beginning of the story, the author introduces the Sea of Flames, a rock fabled to give its wielder an eternal life. This blessing however is paired with a curse. The stone wielder will lose all the people he loves. Marie-Laure and her classmates heard this myth from the curator of the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle on a class trip. “‘Why not”, she asks, “just take the
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Werner and Marie-Laure are connected with a light that the naked-eye cannot see, radio-waves. Nearing the end of the novel, Werner is trapped in rubble with his comrade, Volkheimer. They listen to a french broadcast of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea”, giving the soldiers hope. With restored hope Volkheimer throws a grenade at the wall to save himself and Werner. Werner then rescues Marie-Laure by using a location he had found weeks ago. When Werner calls her brave, she says, “When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?”(469). To this Werner replies, “Not in years. But Today. Today, maybe I did”(469). Doerr not only brings the stories together, he uses this exchange between the characters to help Werner see after so many