Line #40 Literature/AllTheLightWeCannotSee


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/all_the_light_we_cannot_see.png]]
2	->''"Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."''
3	-->-- '''The Frenchman'''
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5	''All The Light We Cannot See'' is a 2014 historical novel written by Anthony Doerr, and winner of the 2015 UsefulNotes/PulitzerPrize for Fiction. The story spans the years 1934 to 1944 in Germany and France. The two main characters are Marie-Laure [=LeBlanc=], a blind French girl, and Werner Pfennig, a German orphan. The story pivots in 1940 when Marie and her father flee Paris for the coastal town of St. Malo, while Werner is picked from his orphanage to attend a special Nazi boarding school for gifted students.
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7	Eventually Marie and Werner's paths collide in occupied France, and just as the war has dramatically changed their lives, so will their meeting.
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9	The novel was adapted into a Creator/{{Netflix}} miniseries [[Series/AllTheLightWeCannotSee of the same name]], which was released on November 2, 2023.
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11	----
12	!! This novel contains examples of:
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14	* AnachronicOrder: For most of the novel, the narrative flashes between the Battle of Saint-Malo in 1944 and the events leading up to it.
15	* ArtifactOfAttraction: The Sea of Flames, the legendary diamond that is said to give a person eternal life but attract misfortune and ill luck to everyone the person who holds the diamond cares about.
16	* BadLuckCharm: The Sea of Flames diamond, the novel's MineralMacGuffin. Played with, in that while the diamond is an ImmortalityInducer--if you have it, you will never die--the diamond brings bad luck on ''other'' people, people you are associated with. People you care about.
17	* BigBad: Sergeant Major [[ImmortalitySeeker Reinhold von Rumpel]] is a Nazi gemologist who is in pursuit of the Sea of Flames, a diamond that is rumored to give its owner immortality. He is a recurring character throughout the book and is responsible for much of the conflict in the third act. [[spoiler: He harasses the blind Marie-Laure Leblanc in an attempt to find out whether she has the Sea of Flames. Later, during the Battle of Saint-Malo, von Rumpel breaks into Marie-Laure's house to find the Sea of Flames, forcing Marie-Laure to hide in the attic with it.]]
18	* BodyDouble: A [[MineralMacGuffin mineral example.]] There are three duplicate gems made of the Sea of Flames - indistinguishable to the untrained eye - made to keep the Germans from tracking down the real one. Even the people carrying the gems, other than the Master of the Louvre, don't know which one is real.
19	* ContrivedCoincidence: All the vast millions that make up the German Army on the Eastern Front, and Werner gets assigned to a unit that includes his old classmate, Volkheimer. And of all the radio broadcasts he's ordered to find, it just happens to be the one that he loved listening to as a child.
20	* CursedItem: The Sea of Flames diamond. It brings immortality to the person who possesses it, but brings bad luck and grief to the people ''around'' that person, the people that the possessor cares about.
21	* DeathByChildbirth: Marie's mother died giving birth to her--possibly due to the curse brought by the Sea of Flames.
22	* DistantFinale: After 90% or so of the book is set in the 1934-44 time frame, a couple of chapters skip forward to 1974 and the last chapter finds Marie an old lady in 2014.
23	* EinsteinHair: Werner is described as having white hair, which was the color of Einstein's hair. Werner is also a bright boy with an interest in science and a talent for radio technology.
24	* HowWeGotHere: After starting out with an Allied bombing raid on St. Malo, the narrative jumps back ten years to 1934.
25	* ImmortalityInducer: The main reason why Reinhold wants the Sea of Flames so badly. The stories say that whoever holds the jewel will never die. By the time he finally gets to St. Malo, Reinhold is ridden with cancer with a life expectancy measured in weeks.
26	* ImmortalitySeeker: Reinhold von Rumpel is in pursuit of the Sea of Flames because of its rumored ability to turn its owner immortal.
27	* IntergenerationalFriendship: Marie befriends her agoraphobic great-uncle, as well as adults who work at the museum.
28	* KindlyHousekeeper: Madame Manec is cook, maid, and companion to Uncle Etienne and a maternal figure to Marie-Laure.
29	* LaResistance: A rather light-hearted version to begin with, as the old ladies of St. Malo do things like leave dog poop out for Germans to step in. Later they get more serious, using Etienne's radio transmitter to report on shipping in and out of the town.
30	* MineralMacGuffin: The Sea of Flames, which drives so much of the plot, as Marie's father is tasked with smuggling the jewel out of Paris and Reinhold is determined to find it. In the end Werner throws it in the grotto and it is forgotten.
31	* OneSteveLimit: Averted. Two of the men in Werner's unit in Russia are referred to as Neumann One and Neumann Two.
32	* OrphanageOfLove: Werner and Jutta grow up in one, headed by an Alsatian woman who loves and cares for the orphans in her charge.
33	* PluckyGirl: It is remarked on that although Marie-Laure has been through a lot, she doesn't let it get her down for long.
34	* PresentTenseNarrative: The entire novel is told in the present tense.
35	* ShellShockedVeteran: Marie's great-uncle Etienne, who takes her and her father in, is this. He came home from UsefulNotes/WorldWarI suffering from severe hallucinations and a case of agoraphobia. Over two decades later, when Marie comes to live with him in 1940, Etienne still never leaves his house. He does not take it well when the Germans show up.
36	* TheShutIn: Uncle Etienne does not leave his house for 24 years, 1920-1944. He finally goes out in desperation when Marie is delayed in her return from the bakery--she has encountered Reinhold at the beach.
37	* TheSiege: A truly pointless one, as the Germans in St. Malo hold out despite being cut off from the rest of the Wehrmacht by the D-Day landings. This leads to the destruction of the town.
38	* SwitchingPOV: The book mostly switches back and forth between the POV of Marie and Werner. Marie's father is occasionally a POV character as well, and later chapters introduce another POV character, Sgt. Major Reinhold von Rumpel, a German who is trying to find the Sea of Flames diamond.
39	* ATasteOfTheLash: The school that enrolls Werner after the authorities find out about his uncommon intelligence is as brutal and vicious as everything else in Nazi Germany. Werner's friend Frederick is singled out for being physically weak and beaten with a rubber hose.
40	* TheUnreveal: Marie never does find out what happened to her father after he was taken to Germany a prisoner.
41	* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Marie and Werner are both intelligent and curious for their age, but this trope applies especially to Werner's younger sister Jutta, a precocious German preteen who is unafraid to question the Nazi regime.
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Context Literature / AllTheLightWeCannotSee