All the Meaning I'm Trying to See

Pgs. 392-530
Addressed in this post: the meaning of the work as a whole.

While reading All the Light We Cannot See, I spent more time thinking about whether or not the book is AP-worthy than its underlying meanings. It sometimes felt like Doerr had written the novel to give me a hard time; I vacillated between chiding myself for looking down at the novel from my unearned perch of AP snobbery and giving literary credit where it wasn't due. But, now that I've finally closed the book (for good—more on that later), I can try to analyze its meaning—a more appropriate use of valuable AP time, no doubt.

Let's start here: All the Light We Cannot See is a good book. I know I'm not supposed to say that, because, dear reader, why would you care what I think about the quality of the book? You're here for analysis. But part of me feels like I have to preface that analysis with some compliments, which truly aren't contrived: the writing is impressive, the characters are adequately flawed, and the balance between historical fiction and popular narrative works exceedingly well.

But the book's shortcomings are hard to ignore. The glaringly obvious one is von Rumpel, the German gemologist whose Scooby Doo-esque side plot comprises a separate novel's worth in pages. Von Rumpel drives an important aspect of the main plot, but his story—which is really about the Sea of Flames—is heavy-handed and often superfluous. Other aspects of the plot, such as the generational storyline that ties the book up in a neat little knot, also feel clunky and out of place.

Let's not waste time grappling with pesky distractions, though (I'll analyze book reviews with similar and differing viewpoints in the final post—watch this space.) Werner and Marie-Laure have quite the finales in this section. Will was right, and I was wrong—they meet, when Werner's battalion comes to France at the height of the war. He is dispatched to—you guessed it—Saint-Malo, where he traces a notorious radio network of the French Resistance to Marie-Laure and Etienne. I appreciate the closure of the radio motif (I addressed this in the first blog post); readers get the sense that communication, especially among the seemingly powerless, is vital. That's a decent mini-meaning.

For those blog readers who haven't read All the Light, I won't divulge the ending of the ending. Let's just say it involves death. It isn't happy, by any means, but it isn't tragic, either, and it's nowhere close to surprising. The truly dramatic portion of the denouement, though, is the moment when Werner arrives on the shore of France, as opposed to what follows. In other words, what makes the ending—and, by extension, the novel—work is the characters' unifying sense of hope, not their shared despair.

All the Light We Cannot See is, above all, about hope. We see it in the energy that fuels Madame Manec to lead a local chapter of the French Resistance; in Frau Elena's love for the children she raised; in the motivation of Etienne to launch a Resistance radio station; in Daniel and Jutta's letters, the very sending of which demonstrates their undying belief in their relatives' security; in the excitement that Hauptmann, Werner's teacher, expresses when he finds out that his student is a math genius; and in Marie-Laure and Werner's quest for some semblance of safety and happiness. These characters are of different ideologies, classes, and nationalities, and they have different temperaments, priorities, and life experiences, but they share an unmitigated sense of hope for a better life. Despite their circumstances, which range from undesirable to unbearable, they move onward, appearing to think of the war as a temporary beast that must, and will, be overcome. They just need to maintain hope.

Somewhere in there, I think, is that elusive creature: the meaning of the work as a whole. Doerr's idea is that hope knows no borders. This theme is expressed most eloquently at the moment Werner arrives in Saint-Malo. He hasn't yet met Marie-Laure; their lives are worlds apart, but their similarities are symbolized by their coincidental geographic proximity. This unity is expressed slightly later in the book, when Marie-Laure muses on the young man talking to her: "He is a ghost. He is from some other world. He is Papa, Madame Manec, Etienne," she thinks, referring to Werner. "He is everyone who has left her family finally coming back." Then, crossing the great divide, Werner tells her, "'I am not killing you. I am hearing you. On radio. Is why I come.'"

Teary yet?

So, yes, I was wrong. The sappy ending I worried about happens, but it isn't sappy at all (at least not this part); it's poetic, sweet, and at once optimistic and painful. It's a perfect ending to a deeply imperfect novel. But, more than anything, its a just expression of a theme with lessons for every reader.