"All the Light We Cannot See." Anthony Doerr. A beautifully orchestrated novel exploring the depths of two young people's lives during the lighting war. The author does a wonderful job of weaving two incredibly different stories, two lives on separate sides of the fight, through intricate detailing and tiny connections. Werner Pfennig is a young German boy. Escaping the treacherous mines in Zollverein where his father was killed, by going and serving the Nazi army. Promised a better life, Werner gives his incredible talents of transmitting, math, and working with radios to the power of the Reich, unaware of what he is doing. Although Werner Pfennig fights for the wrong side. Commits crimes in favor of the killing of huge numbers of people. Doerr holds Pfennig in very high regards. One of the main focuses in his novel is Werner's emotional compass, his struggle for internal peace, and the fight for the right thing. The book follows Werner's perspective and turning of personality. He goes from an adolescent in Zollverein, full of admiration for the Reich, eager to prove himself to his nation, to a defiant soldier in occupied France, in love with a blind French girl, who he later helps survive while the Nazi army breaks down doors in pursuit of her.
Anthony Doerr's writing shows the reader how unaware many of the men, with the Swastika on their arm bands, were. While Werner was pressed into fighting and hunting Jews with the army of the Fuhrer, he was told that the death of his father, the poverty in his home, the lack of bread on the table, was because of corrupt bankers, unreliable businessmen, people who hid in the shadows of the night, searching for children to feed on. He was spoken to as if going out onto the battlefield and fighting for his nation was the right thing to do. That he was fighting for the German women and children. The boys in his school for young Germans were never shown pictures of what their actions resulted in. The killing of Jews was never talked about. It wasn't discussed as mass genocide. The idea of nationality was drilled into these boys minds. Werner leaves this academy a man confident in the fact he is fighting for a greater good. That the only deaths being carried out are those of the Allies, trying to prevent his people from economic success. Soon, the tables begin to turn. As he leaves the training academy for Nazi elite, and begins to use his talent with radios to find illegal radio transmitters in places like Russia, France, as well as Germany, he begins to see what happens what happens when a transmitter traces the signal to its source. The monumental turning point in the book is when the illegal signal is traced to a house in Russia, and after the radio was confiscated, a seven year old girl with a red cape was left in a closet with a bullet through her head. This is when Werner realizes that he is not fighting for his nation, the preservation of the German heritage. He is fighting for the death of innocents. That what the elders at his school told him, "You will eat country and breathe nation," was all a way for him to be persuaded to aid in the death of men women and children who didn't agree and conspire with his leader's ideas.
The end of the book illustrates the uniting of Marie-Laure and Werner's stories in Saint-Malo, France. Because Werner has witnessed the horrors the Nazi's are responsible for, he is reluctant to continue fighting. Marie-Laure is being sought after by a man named von Rumpel, a man responsible for the collection of valuables for Hitler. Marie-Laure is forced to hide in the depths of her house in August 1944, for von Rumpel is searching her home up and down for a beautiful diamond her father was previously in possession of. If von Rumpel finds Marie-Laure, there is no doubt he would kill her for that diamond, whether she had it or not. Werner ends up slaughtering von Rumpel, and although no murder is okay, he killed a Nazi leader for the protection of a blind French girl. This is the scene where the reader witnesses all of the loyalty Werner once had for the Nazi cause rush out of him. Because Werner realized what he was fighting for was so awful, and he then acted upon that realization, one cannot argue he is morally unacceptable. Yes, the actions of his nation and his leaders were disgusting and irredeemable, but was he aware of what was going on when he agreed to fight? No. He was a twelve year old boy, fearful of the life he might live without the aid of what he thought was an honorable cause. Werner's half of the story illustrates how although he started off fighting for the wrong concept, he wasn't aware of the repercussions of the actions of him and his army, and he was not a bad person. This is applicable for many soldiers at the time, although it is certain there was a large portion of men who indeed did know what they were doing. Anthony Doerr portrays the importance of not categorizing people into good or bad, for people's morales, emotions, and ideas have a more nuanced complexity then the simple black and white.
Going along with Werner's morale compass, and the ways in which he had been brainwashed into believing what he was fighting for wasn't the death of innocents, is the ever present theme of how dangerous nationality is. The teachings that fighting for your nation is always the right thing to do, no matter what the circumstances, is a treacherous prospect. Every morning in class, children are forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and before every professional sporting event, our national anthem is sung. This ingraining of patriotic values isn't something that should continue. As seen in "All the Light We Cannot See," many of the boys fighting for the Reich were told they were fighting for the prosperity of their country. They were convinced to go to war in support of the genocide of Jews by being told German nationality is most important. This is what American's are taught as well. Politicians may argue that America will never be responsible for the horrific actions the German's were responsible for. And that may be true. But with every additional time the Pledge is recited at eight-o-clock on a school day, it becomes easier and easier for corrupt, awful leaders to use nationality as a way to justify their otherwise unforgivable policies.
