All the Light We Cannot See is full of empirical science and new technology, and nothing shows this frontier more than the radio. Radios are omnipresent in this new age, and Anthony Doerr uses them as a symbol of hope and faith, but also the Christian God himself.
In the beginning of the novel, Werner discovers a little beat up radio in an alley, and, after days of tinkering and hoping, he hears beautiful music. He “blinks; he has to swallow back tears…. The little radio … sits motionless on the floor between them all like a miracle” (Doerr 33-34). A miracle that changes Werner’s life, saving his body from the pits of mines, and perhaps saving his soul from the pits of hell. Later, as he hears the science broadcasts, it is almost the voice of God calling him to a higher purpose.
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Volkhiemer is a cold giant, but when the doctor is away, he hooks up a Grundig tube radio and fills the lab with classical music. “The huge boy will lean back in a chair… and let his eyelids slip to half mast” (184). He becomes a different person. And then later, in Marie-Laure’s narrative, when Madame Manec dies, radio gives her and Etienne a new cause in life. She wakes to “Music raining down through the ceiling” (322), like a chorus from the heavens. And then their secret broadcasts to the allies help the cause through the sacred