ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

THE LEGEND OF THE SEA OF FLAMES

 

Legend has it that the “Sea of Flames” diamond was created by the goddess of the Moon as a gift for her lover, the sea god. Whoever possesses it will live forever but will be bestowed with the curse that they will lose those closest to them. The curse can only be lifted when they throw the diamond into the sea, thus appeasing the goddess. 

 

Supposedly, due to tragedies from the previous owner, the diamond was signed off to be locked deep within a French museum for 200 years. 

 

196 years later, a tour guide takes a group of kids (including 6-year-old Marie-Laure, who has rapidly declining vision) through the museum. He explains that there is a diamond that is locked away somewhere in the building that is worth 5 Eiffel Towers but can cause immense tragedy.

 

“‘Are all those doors to keep thieves from getting in?’ // ‘Maybe,’ the guide says, and winks, ‘they’re there to keep the curse from getting out.’ // The children fall quiet. Two or three take a step back. // Marie-Laure takes off her eyeglasses, and the world goes shapeless. ‘Why not,’ she asks, ‘just take the diamond and throw it into the sea?’ // The warder looks at her. The other children look at her. ‘When is the last time,’ one of the older boys says, ‘you saw someone throw five Eiffel Towers into the sea?’” (23).

 

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MARIE-LAURE’S STORY

 

Months after the museum tour, Marie-Laure becomes completely blind. 

 

“Marie-Laure will not see anything for the rest of her life. Spaces she once knew as familiar -- the four-room flat she shares with her father, the little tree-lined square at the end of their street -- have become labyrinths bristling with hazards. Drawers are never where they should be. The toilet is an abyss. A glass of water is too near, too far; her fingers too big, always too big. // What is blindness? Where there should be a wall, her hands find nothing. Where there should be nothing, a table leg gouges her shin” (27).

 

In addition to being bullied by kids (and being constantly asked if being blind hurts or if she closes her eyes while sleeping or how she knows what time of day it is), Marie-Laure also suffers from the fact that her mother died during her childbirth. Luckily, she has a very caring Papa, who works as a locksmith for the museum. 

 

• Every year for Marie-Laure’s birthday, Papa uses his locksmithing skills by creating a puzzle box that hides bon-bons. 

 

• Sometimes, as a second gift, he saves enough money to splurge on expensive Braille books, such as Jule Verne’s “Twenty Leagues Under the Sea”, even though they live on a meager budget. 

 

• He built Marie-Laure a model of the city so that she can remember what it looks like.

 

• He challenges Marie-Laure to find her way home after they go on a walk somewhere and he spins her around 3 times.

 

Even though it was a joyous moment when Marie-Laure finally learned how to navigate back home with no mistakes, that celebration was cut short when her and her Papa were forced to flee the city, due to their city being attacked from WWII fights. Marie-Laure and her Papa travel to a friend of the museum director for safety, but when they finally arrive, they find out that the director has fled to London and his home that they were planning on staying at is on fire and being looted. Their best option now is to travel to the house of Papa’s crazy Uncle Etienne (who suffers from PTSD and has not left his house in 24 years) in Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure and Papa are welcomed by Etienne’s warm-hearted maid, Madame Manec. 

 

It originally seemed as though Marie-Laure and Papa left everything -- the only town that Marie knew how to navigate, Marie-Laure’s beloved Braille books, friends and neighbors, etc.) -- but it’s revealed that Papa took along a diamond with him. The museum director had manufactured three fake diamonds and divided them and the real diamond up (so that Papa got one stone, someone else got another, someone else got another, and one remained at the museum). For safety, no one knew who had the real stone.

 

Papa wonders if the stone he received is the real one, especially considering how brilliant its blue is and how there are sparks of red when he shines it in the light. He decides that even if it is real, he doesn’t believe that it carries a curse with it. He believes that there is no such thing as curses -- there’s only people with bad luck. Nevertheless, he makes sure that the stone is by Marie-Laure (hidden in his new model house of Saint-Malo) so that she would be protected if it did indeed offer protection.

 

Sure enough, bad luck seems to occur to everyone that Marie-Laure cares deeply for, in the order of priority. 

 

• Papa gets arrested (potentially because it seemed suspicious that he was taking measurements of buildings) and sent to a German labor camp.

 

• Madame Manec cooks wonderful food for Marie-Laure and cares for her, but she eventually dies (presumably from old age?).

 

• Uncle Etienne bonds with Marie-Laure by pretending to fly to all sorts of destinations together. He even steps outside of his house for the first time in 24 years out of concern for Marie-Laure when she arrives home from the bakery later than usual. Later, while he is out-and-about, he gets arrested (since the town was scheduled for bombings and German soldiers were taking all civilians they saw?). 

 

“The city, thinks Marie-Laure, is slowly being remade into the model upstairs. Streets sucked empty one by one. Each time she steps outside, she becomes aware of all the windows above her. The quiet is fretful, unnatural. It’s what a mouse must feel, she thinks, as it steps from its hole into the open blades of a meadow, never knowing what shadow might come cruising above” (274).

 

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WERNER’S STORY

 

In Germany, Werner and his sister Jutta are orphans. They live in the Children’s House under the care of Frau Elena and a few other orphans. One day, Werner and Jutta find a broken radio, which Werner disassembles and figures out how to fix up. It becomes a routine for him and his sister to listen to the radio together each night. Their favorite station is of a man (who turns out to be Uncle Etienne) giving science talks.

 

Over time, Werner gains the reputation of becoming a master at fixing radios. Word of him even spreads to a German colonel, whose wife is desperate to listen to her jazz music! Werner impresses the colonel and his wife by fixing their radio within minutes, so the colonel gifts him with a few slices of cake (even though cream was outlawed at that point, which didn’t stop the colonel since he knew ways around the law) and promises to write a letter of recommendation to one of the prestigious Hitler Youth academies. Werner protests that he doesn’t have any money for a fancy education, but the colonel assures him that the academies were actually designed for people just like him - talented and low enough class to not have been already biased from teachers. 

 

Werner is excited when he gets invited to the Academy entrance exams (at the age of 14 years old), and he becomes a stickler for following the rules. When German officials outlaw radios, Jutta listens anyway and learns that despite what they’re told, the German army might actually be “the bad guys” since they’re planning to bomb France. Werner ends up breaking Jutta’s radio “for her own good”, which makes Jutta mad at him, but they do write letters to each other while Werner’s away at the Academy.

 

The Academy entrance exams turn out to be brutal. One test involves climbing a makeshift ladder and jumping onto a flag. When candidates get injured, the authorities show annoyance rather than sympathy. Even though Werner is small, he has a thirst to belong. He impresses the testers by jumping onto the flag without hesitation, and by assembling magnets and doorbells and Morse code transmitters in a matter of seconds.

 

The brutality doesn’t stop upon admittance to the Academy. There’s a regular drill where a commandant picks on the “weakest link” in the bunch, gives him a 10-second head start, and then signals for the rest of the boys to chase him. If the weakest boy doesn’t make it to the commandant before getting caught by one of the boys, he gets beat up. Werner’s heart breaks when his only friend (Frederick) repeatedly gets picked as being the weakest (even though Werner knows that he is physically weaker than Frederick) and repeatedly beat up from not making it to the commandant in time. Nevertheless, Werner is too scared to stand up to the commandant to stop the beatings. 

 

“Every part of him wants to scream: is this not wrong? // But here it is right” (194).

 

Later, the Academy authorities bring in a prisoner (potentially Polish?) that escaped from a concentration camp. They brainwash the students that this prisoner is dangerous and subject the prisoner to the harsh punishment of being doused with a bucket of water by each student and then left to die until his flesh is plucked by birds. 

 

“Bastian says, ‘This man escaped from a work camp. Tried to violate a farmhouse and steal a liter of fresh milk. He was stopped before he could do something more nefarious…. This barbarian would tear out your throats in a second if we let him’” (227). 

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Every student obeyed the orders of throwing a bucket of water (including Werner) except for Frederick, showing that he may actually be one of the strongest (morally). As a consequence, the Academy officials beat Frederick so badly that his brain can only do basic functions. He gets sent home to be permanently bed-ridden and reliant on someone to feed him. He now often stares into space and doesn’t make much sense when trying to converse with him. Even after witnessing this (and after hearing about the German plans to exterminate the Jews), does Werner not have any courage to go against the grain.

 

“Disorder. You hear the commandant say it. You hear your bunk masters say it. There must be order. Life is chaos, gentlemen. And what we represent is an evolution of the species. Winnowing out the inferior, the unruly, the chaff. This is the great project of the Reich, the greatest project human beings have ever embarked upon” (240).

 

The officials change Werner’s age to 18 (even though he’s a few months short of it) so that he can have “the honor” of beginning to serve in the War. He serves on a team with the giant Volkheimer, who often wanders into French civilian’s homes uninvited and causes suffering just so he could feel superior. Still, Werner doesn’t do anything to stop this.

 

“Frederick said we don’t have choices, don’t own our lives, but in the end it was Werner who pretended there were no choices. Werner who watched Frederick dump the pail of water at his feet -- ‘I will not’ -- Werner who stood by as the consequences came raining down. Werner who watched Volkheimer wade into house after house, the same ravening nightmare recurring over and over and over” (407).

 

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THE CONVERGENCE OF THEIR STORIES

 

Before Madame Manec died, she told Marie-Laure of the importance of never losing hope, even when things look grim.

 

“‘Do you think, Madame, that in heaven we will get to see God face-to-face?’ // ‘We might.’ // ‘What if you’re blind?’ // ‘I’d expect that if God wants us to see something, we’ll see it.’ // ‘Uncle Etienne says heaven is like a blanket babies cling to. He says people have flown airplanes ten kilometers above the earth and found no kingdoms there. No gates, no angels.’ // Madame Manec cracks off a ragged chain of coughs that sends tremors of fear through Marie-Laure. ‘You are thinking of your father,’ she finally says. ‘You have to believe your father will return.’ // ‘Don’t you ever get tired of believing, Madame? Don’t you ever want proof?’ // Madame Manec rests a hand on Marie-Laure’s forehead. The thick hand that first reminded her of a gardener’s or a geologist’s. ‘You must never stop believing. That’s the important thing.’ // The Queen Anne’s lace sways on its taproots, and the bees do their steady work. If only life were like a Jules Verne novel, thinks Marie-Laure, and you could page ahead when you most needed to, and learn what would happen” (292).

 

Maybe because there was a war being fought elsewhere and they were currently living in peace with close ones with each day being much the same, Madame Manec even adds that Heaven might be like what their life is like at that point.

 

“Now that I think about it, child, I expect heaven is a lot like this” (293).

 

Madame Manec and Marie-Laure teamed up with other women to do what they could to resist the Germans. They agree that they probably shouldn’t do anything as bold as putting bombs in shoes that they repair or pooping in the bread dough that they bake (249), but they resist in simpler ways:

 

• “Madame Fontineau overhears that the German garrison commander is allergic to goldenrod. Madame Carre, the florist, tucks great fistfuls of it into an arrangement headed for the chateau. // The women funnel a shipment of rayon to the wrong destination. They intentionally misprint a train timetable. Madame Hebrard, the postmistress, slides an important-looking letter from Berlin into her underpants, takes it home, and starts her evening fire with it” (252).

 

• “Now, Madame Blanchard, you’ve had beautiful handwriting all your life. Take this fountain pen of Master Etienne’s. On every five-franc note, I want you to write, ‘Free France Now.’ No one can afford to destroy money, right? Once everyone has spent their bills, our little message will go out all over Brittany” (253).

 

• Marie-Laure regularly orders “an ordinary loaf” at the bakery, to which Madame Ruelle asks if her uncle is “doing well” (which is code for if the uncle is still on-board to cooperate). This loaf is stuffed with numbers that the uncle reads off on the transmitter that he built years ago (and decided not to turn into the government when the Germans outlawed radios).

 

Meanwhile, the German sergeant major von Rumpel seeks out the Sea of Flames. He has a tumor in his throat and wants the diamond so that he can live forever. He tracks down all 3 fakes before realizing that Marie-Laure must have the diamond. He invades her house and stays there for 4 days while Marie-Laure is trapped in the attack without food (except for the jar of peaches that she’s saving) and without water. She doesn’t want to leave since she’s afraid that von Rumpel will kill her, but when she finally has had enough, she turns on the transmitter, plays piano music, and whispers for help. Werner hears her call for help and finally decides to be brave! 

 

Werner gets von Rumpel out of the way and gives Marie-Laure instructions on how she can seek out safety. In return, Marie-Laure gives him the diamond, the model house, and an iron key. He throws the diamond into the sea (thereby uplifting the curse) and keeps the other objects as mementos of Marie-Laure. But because he is not under the protection of the stone, he gets a fever and then steps on a landmine that was set by his own army three months earlier. 

 

Werner was only 16-ish when he died, and by the time the war ended, Marie was 16 and Jutta was 15. 

 

“We all grew up before we were grown up” (515).

 

Marie-Laure gets reunited with Uncle Etienne, but she never sees Papa again. It’s unknown what happened, only that he got sent to a German labor camp and contracted influenza. Marie-Laure has had two lovers, the second of which she had a daughter with but fell out of love with. I wonder if her and Werner could have worked out if not for political differences and if not for the fact that Werner died.

 

30 years later, Jutta is now married and has sons, and she’s thankful that she now can buy pork whenever she wants, but she still deeply grieves the loss of her brother.