All The Light We Cannot See Character Analysis

Free will, free will, free will. (epizeuxis) Marie-Laure, Werner, and everyone else in this world has free will, but it is a matter of how constrained one is to use that power to their own discretion. In the book, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, one of the main characters, Werner, does have his own free will, but to a certain extent. Werner is an orphan boy who has studied math, and radio engineering since he was a young boy. He has a younger sister, Jutta, who he cares for and loves with all his heart. One day when he gets accepted to a Nazi training school he starts to grow apart from his sister and foster family. Werner had more free will when he was in poverty at the orphanage, than he does at the school because he didn’t have as many responsibilities as he does now.

He knows how to solve almost every trigonometry problem, and fix any computer. “The little professor stands at the chalkboard drawing a wiring schematic for a simple Morse-code practice circuit… “You have one hour” ...In under a minute, he (Werner) has built an oscillator to match the schematic” (Doerr 148). His professor is always giving him special treatment because of his talent. Werner has free will in a way because he is allowed to listen to the radio and eat chocolates while the other boys are in class. His free will stops when he is participating in the outdoor training with Bastian, and other boys. Everything seems to stop there because he knows the kind of consequences that would happen if he stepped out of line for himself, or others. During field practices he would never run too fast or too slow towards the “weakest” boy someone had chosen earlier. He know if he runs too fast and caught up he would have to catch him then he would feel guilt, but if he caught up and did not catch the boy, he would get backlash for being the next weak one. He also knows if he runs too slow he’ll be chosen as the next most weak