Part Five: January 1941

January Recess, He is Not Coming Back, Prisoner, Plage du Môle, Lapidary, Entropy, The Rounds, Nadel im Heuhaufen, Proposal, You Have Other Friends, Old Ladies’ Resistance Club, Diagnosis, Weakest (#3), Grotto, Intoxicated, The Blade and the Whelk, Alive Before You Die, No Out, The Disappearance of Hubert Bazin, Everything Poisoned, Visitors, The Frog Cooks, Orders, Pneumonia, Treatments, Heaven, Frederick, Relapse

Werner’s counterpoint at the school is his friendship with Frederick. While Werner is eager to succeed, Frederick seems nonchalant and more interested in birds that appear in the yard. His innocence is noticed and his love of nature leads him to be singled out as ‘the weakest’. Bastian has the others chase and punish him in a cruel ritual. Werner does not help Frederick and is plagued by nagging misgivings as a result.

Despite Werner’s lack of support for Frederick, Frederick still invites him home during January recess. Werner hears Frederick’s mother telling her friends about the Schwartzenberger crone who will be gone soon and how they intend to expand into that house. The same force that will pick on Frau Schwartzenberger for being different, a Jew, is about to turn on her own son for being different.

On return to the school from January recess, a prisoner is presented to the cadets and they take turns throwing cold water on him. Frederick refuses. Frederick had previously warned Werner that his life does not belong to him anymore. Conversely, Frederick has courageously taken back his own life and is making his own decisions. The result is that Frederick disappears. Werner makes inquiries but the only clue is blood on a pillow. Werner considers Jutta and knows he ‘will never be able to tell her about this’ as it only supports her resistance. Outside of this, Werner’s progress at the school is exemplary. He has managed to find ‘Nadel im Heuhaufen’, the needle in a haystack. That is, he can locate a transmission using two receivers and mathematical formula. It’s only numbers, he is reassured. However, it will soon be real people and real consequences. Werner stops writing to Jutta because the memories are too painful. She sends him his childhood notebook to remind him of the person he used to be.

In Saint-Malo, Marie-Laure is waiting for the return of her father. It has been twenty days. She learns that he never arrived in Paris. Madame Manec decides to take Marie-Laure outside. She explores the ocean, a world not mapped by her father’s scale model, a world with life and shells often unseen by many but treasured by Marie-Laure. In addition to the care she provides for the residents at home, Madame Manec forms a small group of women willing to disrupt the German’s war effort. Using the analogy of a frog in boiling water, Madame Manec accuses Etienne of slowly accepting German occupation without a fight. When Etienne still decides against the opportunity to help with the resistance efforts, Madame Manec asks him, ‘don’t you want to be alive before you die’ challenging him to, in the words of his own recordings, ‘open his eyes before they are closed forever’.

Marie-Laure receives a letter from her father. He is in a camp and has smuggled out correspondence. Urging her to look ‘inside Etienne’s house’, ‘inside the house’ is a reminder of the idea of worlds within worlds. Madame Manec’s words to Marie-Laure shortly before she dies that ‘Heaven is a lot like this’ also contributes to the idea that this life could be a world within a world. Madame Manec suffers and dies from pneumonia.

Major von Rumpel learns his cancer is getting worse. This intensifies his resolve to find the Sea of Flames.

Werner, who has lost control of his own life now, is ordered to the front. Dr Hauptmann, his mentor at the academy, has changed his age and assigned him to a unit. He visits Frederick who is in a vegetative state. He has lost interest in birds.

Part Five Quotes

‘Your problem, Werner,’ says Frederick, ‘is that you still believe you own your life.’ Part 5, January Recess

The boys watch, the commandant tilts his head. Frederick pours the water onto the ground. ‘I will not.’ (Frederick) Part 5, Prisoner

Mostly he misses Jutta: her loyalty, her obstinacy, the way she always seems to recognize what is right. Part 5, Intoxicated

Madame Manec says, ‘Don’t you want to be alive before you die?’ (to Etienne) Part 5, Alive Before You Die

A real diamond is never perfect. Part 5, Lapidary

‘You must never stop believing. That’s the most important thing.’ (Madame Manec to Marie-Laure) Part 5, Heaven

They just say words, and what are words but sounds these men shape out of breath, weightless vapours they send into the air of the kitchen to dissipate and die. Part 5, Visitor

Part Six: 8 August 1944

Someone in the House, The Death of Walter Bernd, Sixth-floor Bedroom, Making the Radio, In the Attic

Having previously declared herself ‘the whelk’, a predatory sea snail, when joining the resistance movement of Madame Manec, Marie-Laure relies on imagining she is in a shell when von Rumpel arrives at the house. Her father’s voice is still a protecting element. She goes into her grandfather’s room and through the wardrobe via the false doors Etienne has installed. She asks the stone to protect her now, if that is what it does, another science-loving naturalist who has come to rely on faith.

Fuelled by memories of his own, prompted by Frank Volkheimer asking him to think of his sister, Werner is spurred into action and begins to repair the radio. He scans the frequencies but only finds static. This lack of signal is both a lack of help and a lack of direct orders. All the facets that radios have come to represent are missing.

Part Six Quotes

When Werner overhears Frederick’s mother say to a woman, ‘Oh, the Schwartzenberger crone will be gone by year’s end, then we’ll have the top floor, du wirst schon sehen’. Part 5, January Recess

In her head, her father reasons: Marie-Laure. Part 6, Someone in the House

He thinks of his own daughters, how much they would love to see a city on a table. His youngest would want him to kneel beside her. (von Rumpel) Part 6, Sixth-floor Bedroom

A sentence Etienne once read aloud returns: Even the heart, which in higher animals, when agitated, pulsates with increased energy, in the snail under similar excitement, throbs with a slower motion. Part 6, In the attic

Part Seven: August 1942

Prisoners, The Wardrobe, East, One Ordinary Loaf, Volkheimer, Fall, Sunflowers, Stones, Grotto, Hunting, The Messages, Loudenvielle, Gray, Fever, The Third Stone, The Bridge, Rue des Patriarches, White City, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Telegram

Returning to a previous moment in the timeline, the reader is delivered a glimpse of Werner’s time in the war leading up to Saint-Malo. The characters of Neumann One and Neumann Two meet Werner and they travel by train to Lodz. There Werner sees trainloads of prisoners. He mistakenly believes they are leaning on sacks but soon realises they are sitting on their dead companions. Werner, although witnessing the scene, does not fully comprehend it. The reader, on the other hand, with a knowledge of concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Birkenau, knows what trainloads of prisoners mean.

Werner finds the transceivers he worked on at Schulpforta are now in the field and he uses one to trace broadcasts. His companion from school, Frank Volkheimer, is with him. Werner has nightmares of Frederick and of Jutta staring at him accusingly. Werner and Volkheimer begin to ‘hunt’ a signal and when they pinpoint it, Werner listens as the broadcaster is shot. He reflects on Dr Hauptmann’s statement that a scientist is defined by his interests and the times. They drive across many places continuing to trace and exterminate radio broadcasters. Werner becomes very ill and Volkheimer cares for him. In a feverish state he sees Jutta and Frau Elena surrounded by the dead. Despite his best efforts, Werner’s conscious is still lingering.

Spurred by Madame Manec’s death, Etienne joins the fight. He emerges from his room and discusses with Marie-Laure about how they can continue the work that the resistance women have started. Marie-Laure is to order an ordinary loaf from the bakery and answer that her uncle is well. Inside the loaf are numbers or messages for them to transmit. The idea of an ordinary loaf parallels the resistance movement: something simple and everyday can contain something important. Worlds within worlds.

Marie-Laure is urged to go to the bakery and come straight home. Etienne broadcasts the codes and plays a little music at the same time. Often Marie-Laure visits a grotto she was shown by a homeless man known to Madame Manec where she stands in the sea and feels the shells and the waves. The announcements continue. Etienne cannot understand many of them but he pictures the protective ghost of Madame Manec outside the house. Two sparrows come to her and Madame Manec tucks them protectively in her coat.

Major von Rumpel has eliminated three of the four stones as decoys. He now considers who might have the fourth. He knows soon he will be handed a rifle and sent to the front as Germany’s war effort is failing. With the tumour growing, he is desperate to find the diamond. He attends Daniel LeBlanc’s house in Paris and searches for clues. In the scale model he finds the house he is in and notices it has some sort of keylock. Unable to figure it out, he smashes it on the floor. The difference between a blind girl twisting and activating the puzzle lock and von Rumpel’s blunt force and ability to see is noteworthy.

Werner’s unit closes in on a transmission. He watches a young girl play in the park then leave. Mistaking a wire for an antennae, Werner sends in the soldiers. Neumann Two shoots the mother and the girl. Despite the lack of remorse shown by any of the other soldiers, Werner is sick when he returns to the vehicle. The glorious war machine depicted in the propaganda is not what Werner is seeing at the front. The radio had lied.

Connections are formed. Etienne and Marie-Laure become close and he sees her future as a reason to fight. Volkheimer adopts Werner and cares for him. Von Rumpel forges a connection to the Sea of Flames and its owner, a connection that is not constructive.

Part seven ends with a telegram from the Germans alerting the surrounding areas of the resistance broadcast. Etienne and Marie-Laure are in danger.

Part Seven Quotes

‘These numbers, they’re more than numbers. Do you understand?’
‘But we are the good guys. Aren’t we, Uncle?’
‘I hope so. I hope we are.’ (Marie-Laure and Etienne) Part 7, The Bridge

Volkheimer who always makes sure there is food for Werner. Who brings him eggs, who shares his broth, whose fondness for Werner remains, it seems, unshakable… Part 7, White City

That is how things are with Neumann Two, with everybody in this unit, in this army, in this world, they do as they’re told, they get scared, they move about with only themselves in mind. Name me someone who does not. Part 7, White City

How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing? Part 7, Bath

A line comes back to Marie-Laure from Jules Verne: Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth. Part 7, One Ordinary Loaf

Part Eight: 9 August 1944

Fort National, In the Attic, The Heads, Delirium, Water, The Beams, The Transmitter, Voice

Etienne is held at Fort National which is bombed by the Allies by mistake. Nine Frenchmen are killed. The uncertainty of Etienne’s fate and the senseless nature of the deaths are a way that Doerr reminds us that war is brutal. Marie-Laure stays hidden in the radio room. She has a discussion with her absent father. The lines are once again blurred between the living and the imagined: Madame Manec is seen as a protective ghost; Etienne broadcasts to his deceased brother; Werner pictures Jutta and Frau Elena; and von Rumpel imagines his children in the home of Etienne happily playing with the model town.

Von Rumpel is in the house he has seen in the model town and knows where the stone would be. In the model of Etienne’s house. He exclaims, ‘Das Häuschen fehlt, wo bist du Häuschen?’ The house is missing, where are you house? He is delirious and near death, the Sea of Flames is his final chance.

Marie-Laure has become a shell that she so much admired, cloistered with a room for a shell. She begins reading from Jules Verne just like she did in Paris.

Volkheimer and Werner connect in the cellar. Finally free from the influences of the school or fellow officers, they talk. Volkheimer reveals his grandfather felled timber for the navy. They agree that they both had thoughts of leaving the army. Trapped in the army, they are now trapped in the cellar. He wonders how did Jutta understand so much about how the world worked? She had seen right through the trap Werner was now in. Suddenly a voice is heard on the radio. In what is now a full cycle, a LeBlanc is transmitting and Werner is listening.

Part Eight Quotes

To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Part 8, The Transmitter

It’s a rock, Papa. A pebble. There is only luck, bad or good. Chance and physics. Remember? You are alive. I am only alive because I have not yet died. Part 8, In the Attic

Or one more day of light. But they will not need light to use the rifle. Part 8, The Heads

Only numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way. It’s the same on their side too. Part 8, The Beams

He is here. He is right below me. Do something. Save her. But God is only a white cold eye, a quarter-moon poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, as the city is gradually pounded to dust. Part 8, Voice

Part Nine: May 1944

Edge of the World, Numbers, May, Hunting (Again), Clair de Lune, Antenna, Big Claude, Boulangerie, Grotto, Agoraphobia, Nothing, Forty Minutes, The Girl, Little House, Numbers, Sea of Flames. The Arrest of Etienne LeBlanc, 7 August 1944, Leaflets

Backtracking slightly, Doerr describes the days leading up to the bombing of Saint-Malo. The soldiers, including Werner and Volkheimer, are on their way to Brittany. Volkheimer reads Werner a letter from home. He still sees images of the dead girl. They arrive at Saint-Malo and are informed of the transmission. Numbers, announcements, music. At night Werner knows the dead girl from Vienna walks the halls, hunting for him. He finally writes Jutta a letter, a sign he has acknowledged her position was right although he can never say it through letters.

Von Rumpel hears that Daniel LeBlanc has been arrested and is in a camp. The information was traded for assistance but he hangs up on the informant indicating he had no intention of upholding his side of the deal. He visits ‘Big Claude’, the perfumer, to learn more about Daniel. Claude reveals the address at Number 4 rue Vauborel.

Also passing by Number 4 rue Vauborel is Werner. He has heard the transmission and recognises it as the one he heard in his childhood. Werner sees six-year-old Jutta lean toward him, Frau Elena kneading bread in the background and a crystal radio in his lap. The cords of his soul are not yet severed. He feigns as if there is no broadcast and hunts for the antenna himself. He sees it on the side of the chimney. Werner is concerned that Volkheimer knows he failed to report the transmission. He returns to the house and sees Marie-Laure and is fascinated by her as she walks past him with her cane to the bakery.

Marie-Laure walks to the bakery and then to the grotto. She is cornered by a man asking her about her father. She curls up in the grotto, locked inside a small gate, and pretends she is a whelk. Marie-Laure has no idea that her father may have the diamond until von Rumpel asks her about it, revealing it to her.

Etienne is anxious as Marie-Laure has not returned. The love he holds for the girl has driven him to break through his fear and go outside for the first time in years. He finds Marie-Laure after a frantic search. His coming for her is a continuation of Daniel’s promise to never leave her. He says that Marie-Laure is the best thing that ever came into his life. They decide that Etienne will fetch the bread from now on. On one such mission, he is confronted by von Rumpel and arrested. Marie-Laure is now all alone.

Part Nine Quotes

I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colours. …. It is my favourite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. (Werner’s letter to Jutta) Part 9, Hunting (again)

‘In the end,’ murmurs Volkheimer as the truck heaves away, ‘none of us will avoid it.’ Part 9, The Girl

‘Marie-Laure,’ he says without hesitation. He squeezes her hand with both of his. ‘You are the best thing that has ever come into my life.’ (Etienne) Part 9, Sea of Flames

Frederick said we don’t have choices … but in the end it was Werner who pretended there were no choices. Part 9, Clair de Lune

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. Part 9, Clair de Lune

She crouches over her knees. She is the Whelk. Armored. Impervious. (Marie-Laure) Part 9, Grotto

So, asked the children, how do you know it’s really there? You have to believe the story. Part 9, Little House

Part Ten: 12 August 1944

Entombed, Fort National, Captain Nemo’s Last Words, Visitor, Final Sentence, Music #1, Music #2, Music #3, Out, Wardrobe, Comrades, The Simultaneity of Instants, Are You There?, Second Can, Birds of America, Cease-fire, Chocolate, Light

In a parallel to the story that Marie-Laure is reading, wherein Captain Nemo and crew are trapped in the submarine, Werner places the headphones on Volkheimer and wishes he understood the beautiful story. He asks if Frank knows that he had disobeyed orders by not tracing the transmission. Frank does not answer. After the story, Marie-Laure begs for help. She feels like a whelk, hiding, hoping the gulls will not pick her up and break her on the rocks.

Etienne watches the shelling from Fort National. He decides on where the shells have landed by the colour of the rubble that rises into the air, whether they had hit stone, soil or human flesh. He too finds comfort in the memory of his past, his brother, his first radio. He thinks that the ‘universe is full of fuel’. This is as much a comment on the things in Saint-Malo that can burn as a comment on man’s attitude that will so often fuel conflict.

Von Rumpel hears the voice of his father, maybe this was just a test. He has directed Claude Levitte to march the girl away so he can search the house. He believes the house is empty. Searching brings memories of his daughters. The closer to death he feels the more he remembers. Then he hears a voice above him speaking about coal. It is the transmission.

Spurred by the transmission, Werner and Volkheimer use the grenade they were saving as a last resort. It works. They see a sliver of sky and they are free. Werner is handed a rifle and Volkheimer encourages him to go. It seems the giant man is also free from the army now and happy to assist Werner in rescuing the French girl. He meets von Rumpel at the house who assumes he is also there for the diamond. In a tense standoff, pistols are pointed and when the noise of Marie-Laure in the other room distracts the Major, Werner shoots him.

As the two characters meet, Doerr captures an array of instances that are going on simultaneously: von Rumpel’s wife observes the good looks of an injured neighbour; Jutta is at the children’s home; the Fuhrer eats breakfast; two inmates are in Kiev; a wagtail bird looks for snails to eat; and young boys at Schulpforta wait to receive antitank landmines. The stories remind us that although we have followed some obscure stories in the war there are many others, more light that we have not seen.

Werner asks Marie-Laure in the French he has learned from Frau Elena, ‘es tu la?’ Are you there? The two share the second tin of food Marie-Laure has saved, the sweet peaches. They talk and common ground is found in the transmissions. They look at the transmitter. Werner picks up a book on birds and tears out a page that is destined for Frederick. They hide in the cellar and eventually fall asleep. Rest.

When it is time to go, it is notable that it is Marie-Laure that leads Werner to the city’s edge. She takes him on a quick detour to the grotto. She places something wooden there and when reassured it is in the water, she says goodbye and places something in Werner’s hand. It is the key to the grotto.

Marie-Laure meets up with Madame Ruelle, one of the women from Madame Manec’s resistance circle. They are fed chocolate. Etienne joins them, freed from the Fort National.

Werner is captured by French resistance fighters. He becomes increasingly unwell and is eventually added to a tent for the dying. One night he starts walking toward Germany. Passing through a field the Germans have laced with landmines he steps on one and ‘disappears in a fountain of earth’. Werner’s death by a landmine laid by his own country’s army highlights that in war human beings are, in a sense, killing themselves.

Part Ten Quotes

She says, ‘When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?’
He says, ‘Not in years. But today. Today maybe I did.’ (Marie-Laure and Werner) Part 10, Second Can

He does not look away until she is through the intersection, down the next block, and out of sight (Werner and Marie-Laure) Part 10, Cease-fire

The window glows. The slow sandy light of dawn permeates the room. Everything transient and aching; everything tentative. To be here, in this room, high in this house, out of the cellar, with her: it is like medicine. (Werner and Marie-Laure) Part 10, Second Can