I don’t know why I decided to read two World War II novels back to back, both set in Nazi Germany. The former, The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas is a compact and focused story, which took less than a day to finish. All the Light We Cannot See has a greater ambition, covers a lot more ground, multi-layered and blends in reality with the supernatural. In this regard, they are starkly different novels. But I feel like for both, the essence is the same. Most contemporary novels set in the Third Reich has the same sort of vibe to them. I also have The Book Thief in the back of my mind.
But the title reminded me most of the best book that came out during this era, written by a young girl in hiding and who tragically did not live long enough to see through the fall of the regime. Anne Frank mentioned in her diary that we all have a little sun inside us that cannot be extinguished, though it can temporarily be dimmed. This to me, is the light that we cannot see, and the light that matters. And I suppose that the book tries to capture the essence of this idea, that there is retribution and the spirit shall remain alive in the face of great tragedy.
The gem in the ruins of Saint Malo
The structure of the book blends the impending events towards the climax story with events from the past. Most of the chapters are branched to the two main characters — Marie-Laure, a blind French girl living in a Paris museum with her father and Werner, a German orphan with a gift of resolving mechanical problems, especially the radio. A third minor prong in the story is von Rumpel, the gemologist assigned to collect all the antiques Europe had to offer. His intention is singular — an infamous diamond called the Sea of Flames, reputed to bring immortality and eternal bad luck for the proprietor. Allegedly, wars have been won and lost at the cause of this diamond.
The three stories converge in Saint Malo, the last German stronghold towards the West of France. It is a place known for its walls by the sea, buildings that have stood before France was a concept, soon to bedestroyed by Allied bombs before the close of World War II. Marie-Laure and her father had to abandon their residence in Paris for the crazy uncle in Saint Malo, who lives in a mansion by the sea. Werner were assigned to Saint Malo to find the culprit who has been sending radio signals wreaking havoc in the German lines, von Rumpel piecing the puzzle one by one to find the location of the Sea of Flames, fast running out of time as the cancer in his body deteriorates him.
The trouble with Blindness
All the Light We Cannot See teeters in the poetic, though it is not a book that is ever in danger of being overwritten. Doerr’s control of the plot is balanced by the small details that fill the story. In a novel where the lack of sight pervades, details are omnipresent and elevated.
Here a dead horse, starting to bloat. Here a chair upholstered in striped green velvet. Here the torn shreds of a canopy proclaim a brasserie. Curtains swing idly from broken windows in the strange, flickering light, and someone far away might be screaming, or it might be the wind. The blasts have stripped many shop signs off their brackets, and the gibbets hang forsaken.
Each of the detail tells a story of its own, each compels us to try and fill the gaps. How did the horse die? Was it a scream, and why is the person screaming? And somehow these collages of details connect together to form the ravaged image of Saint Malo after the bombing.
Blindness and the battle against it is in the veins of every page. In her blindness, Marie-Laure has to learn how to navigate through the streets of Paris and Saint Malo with the model city that her father created, she needs to learn the different smells and sounds of the streets familiar to her. Werner’s radio is a medium which demands the listener’s visual imagination, as he and his sister listens to the French scientific broadcasts which furthered Werner’s interest in engineering. The radio is also a tool to block information, as the nazis claim all the radios and block out any broadcasts from overseas. The citizens of the Third Reich thus becoming blind themselves to what is happening outside, or how other nations perceived them. The Nazis are notorious for this — as the war escalates, the Nazis censor Werners letters more and more, the heavy black strips that masks his words almost covering the entire letter. What cannot be seen is what matters. Come to think of it, the whole idea reminds me of The Little Prince:
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
And thus, this parallels our own predicament as a reader. This is the charm of the book, which makes us reflect on our own blindness, and even the book’s blindness. As readers, the book demands us to construct the novel with our own imagination, as a movie director would for our minds. We need to construct the novel as Marie-Laure navigates through the streets of Saint Malo. The book itself is an attempt to make sense of history through fiction. It was the author’s task to navigate through historical events and place them into the fabric of the narrative, the way Marie-Laure’s father constructed the model of the city, so that the reader can find her way into the story.
The attempt to defeat this blindness is a testament of the human spirit, to overcome the blindness the characters must do extraordinary things. We can also see this battle in the book’s minor characters. Jutta has to defy her brother as he was taken in with the regime, oblivious to the atrocities happening in their own homeland. Madame Manec’s involvement in the war may be minuscule in defeating the Nazis, but delivering messages and turning street signs around to mislead their occupiers gave her meaning.
The book also captures the tensions and anxiety prevalent before the war — the lack of belief that your own nation can be defeated, rumours that may or may not be exaggerated, the gravity of the news on the face of defeat. The most poignant parts of the book were passages when Marie-Laure traveled with her father to find a new residence after Paris was occupied. And in many ways, the experiences of the character may resemble our own in a world that is constantly teetering towards an unknown war. We only know when the bubble pops when it does. Out of all the multitudes of short chapters, the one that I’ll remember the most is “The Frog Cooks”:
“Do you know what happens, Etienne,” says Madame Manec from the other side of the kitchen, “when you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water?”
“You will tell us, I am sure.”
“It jumps out. But do you know what happens when you put the frog in a pot of cool water and then slowly brig it to a boil? You know what happens then?”
Marie-Laure waits. The potatoes steam.
Madame Manec says, “The frog cooks.”
Are we all simmering in a water right now that is gradually boiling? Only to find out that we’re already cooked?
I cannot deny that All the Light We Cannot See is a beautifully written novel, we can mistake the simplicity of it and miss the layers hidden underneath. It is an imperfect book though. The build-up of the characters’ storylines to its climaxes were abrupt and the payoff left me hollow. I found little satisfaction at the ending of the novel, which somehow dragged after the core of the story was done and dusted. But for the pages before them, and the fact that it makes one reflect on the state of the world and our own blindness, and how to defy them, the book is mesmerising.
