Complex Story, Simple Questions

Notes on All the Light We Cannot See

In the Hunt for Red October, as a simple example, Ramius desires his freedom from oppression. Each step he takes to gain his freedom increases the obstacles he must overcome, so the novel's plot creates escalating tension. Since he's trying to escape to America in a Soviet submarine, readers can easily track the progression of the story's plot and the fulfillment of the story's promise, that he gain his freedom.

I call this a story line and a plot line. Gain freedom from oppression, story, can he escape to America, plot. Note how each issue can be framed as a story question and a plot question. (I have a full breakdown and diagram of Hunt at http://www.storyispromise.com/hunt.pdf)

A novel doesn't have to operate on this simple, transparent level. Anthony Doerr's novel All the Light We Cannot See explores an idea, how World War II affected ordinary people. The purpose of the story isn't just the outcome of a quest, the actions of the characters in total convey ideas about the nature of war and its aftermath.

This makes the action and structure of All the Light We Cannot See both subtle and also operating around simple questions that allow readers to assign meaning to the action, to have a sense of the purpose and direction of the story, if not the final outcome.

This essay is about how Doerr organized the novel in both complex and simple ways to make it dramatic, thoughtful, and compelling.

The novel starts with a title, Zero, and a date, 7 August 1944. Since the story moves about through time, this is a quick way to orient readers as the story progresses.

The opening, Leaflets, is two paragraphs. It's a warning that bombers are on the way and mortars with incendiary rounds are being fired.

Simple question, what is the target? One clue, that the mortars are being fired from nearby beachfront hotels.

Next is the two page chapter titled The Girl. This introduces a blind girl who can hear the sound of the planes approaching. This chapter sets up a simple question. Will the girl survive the bombing? The answer comes about half way through the book (and sets up another complication/simple question that is answered at the end of the book).

Note the reader is allowed to focus on this simple dramatic question, will the girl survive? The question is not elusive or a metaphor.

The blind girl is fingering a model of the city that is about to be bombed. These models will be a significant part of the story for several reasons that come out at different times.

The next chapter is titled The Boy, and introduces Werner, who seems (note the word seems) to be attached to a German anti-aircraft unit stationed in a hotel near the girl. This chapter ends with Werner's question, "Are they really coming?"

The reader knows more than Werner that yes, they are coming.

The next chapter is Saint-Malo. It offers details about the town (last German fortress on the Breton coast) and an overview of the war at that time.

Note the main characters are introduced first, the town and what's happening in the war, second. Struggling writers often begin with an introduction to a story's environment and history ahead of a novel's main characters.

In the chapter titled Number 4 rue Vauborel, the young girl, Marie-Laure, goes to the miniature town created by her father and retrieves a plum-sized jewel from a hidden compartment. It comes out that she lives in the house with her great uncle Etienne, with whom she has lived for four years. The chapter ends with Marie-Laure whispering, "Papa?" as she holds the jewel.

Simple questions, what is this jewel and where is her father? What does he have to do with the hidden jewel?

As with the other questions so far, the questions are clear, simple, and direct. They aren't buried in details about environments or what characters look like. Doerr chooses to highlight the important details that he wants his readers to focus on.

Next chapter, Cellar, focuses on Werner, who still seems attached to an anti-aircraft unit; he's working with a receiver that has him in contact with nearby German forces. This chapter introduces Frank Volkheimer, a giant German soldier who works with Werner, and Bernd, an engineer. Frank tells Werner they will be safe in the cellar. Werner remembers listening to a French radio broadcast when he was young. The last line,

      He sees a flock of blackbirds explode out of a tree.

This foreshadows something that will be covered soon in the novel.

In this final chapter in the beginning of the novel, Bombs Away, the approach of the bombs is described in metaphors. The last line,

      In the cellar beneath the Hotel of Bees, the single light bulb
      in the ceiling [where Werner is] winks out.

This is the last chapter to begin the novel.

The next section of the book is titled One, with the year 1934.

The title of the first chapter is Museum National d'Hhstorie Naturelle.

Now we get more detail about Marie-Laure, that she's six and losing her eyesight, and her father works at the museum as a locksmith and that a precious gem, the Sea of Flames, is hidden away in the museum. There's a story/myth that the gem offers healing to whoever holds it.

The gem will have a significant role to play in the novel, so the long story about it is justified.

The chapter ends with the girl blind.

Note the difference if the novel had started here with Marie-Laure and the story about the gem. There would have been no questions to capture the attention of readers.

Next we meet Werner and his sister Jutta growing up in an orphanage in a poor coal-mining town in Germany. Werner is frail and has snow white hair, which makes him an oddity in the town.

Next, we discover the life that Marie-Laure's father sets up for her when she goes blind, and we learn that her mother died in child birth.

We have been drawn in to want to know more about these two characters.

The chapters continue in the past, setting out the lives of Werner and Marie-Laure. From this point on, I will talk about the novel in more general terms.

Werner finds a radio and explores how it operates. He and his sister Jutta listen to broadcasts from France. Marie-Laure's father builds models of their neighborhood in Paris to help his daughter navigate when she goes outside. First, with him, then later on her own.

Doerr develops a metaphor that coal is a form of light, since it came from light that helped plants to grow. Coal is a form of light we cannot see. The gem Sea of Flames is also a form of light, a form of light that has accumulated stories about itself.

Now rumors begin to circulate about the Germans invading France. Werner continues to develop his ability to build and work with radios. Marie is given part one of a novel in Braille, and she learns that she and her father must leave Paris, and he is taking something important from the museum.

This raises questions. Will they be able to escape Paris? Find shelter with an uncle who suffers from delusions caused by combat in WWI?

Werner fixes a radio that belongs to a local Nazi leader. What will happen to Werner when he is of an age to leave the orphanage and work in a coal mine?

These questions are clearly presented.

Section Two of the novel begins with the date, 8 August 1944, ten years after Section One.

This section takes up in Saint-Malo just after the bombs have fallen. Marie survives; is it because of the jewel she holds? Werner is alive, but buried in the basement of the hotel with Frank Volkheimer, and no way out.

What will happen to Marie now, and Werner? The answers to the questions of what would happen to them when the bombs fall raises new questions.

This is unlike a novel like Hunt, where you have a few basic questions and have to read to the end of the novel to get answers.

This concludes this review, which is not a full review of the novel.

A full review of the novel is available in the print and ebook versions of A Story is a Promise, my writing workbook.