Part Zero: 7 August 1944

Leaflets, Bombers, The Girl, The Boy, Saint-Malo, Number 4 rue Vauborel, Cellar, Bombs Away

Anthony Doerr begins his novel in medias res, that is, in the middle of the action. His first chapter involves bombers dropping leaflets from the sky onto the town of Saint-Malo. The leaflets read, ‘Depart immediately to open country’. By nightfall, American soldiers are preparing to drop bombs on the city. The imagery of small papers fluttering to the earth mirrors Doerr’s structure of the novel. Many small chapters with short information is to follow.

The chapter details scenes from the final days of WWII and we are introduced to the two main protagonists: sixteen year old Marie-Laure, who is blind and trapped alone in a house, and eighteen year old Werner Pfennig, a German soldier trapped in the cellar of a hotel. Outside the bombs are falling. The pair have contrasting ideas of safety that reflect their journey thus far. Werner has obeyed orders to take refuge in a hotel shelter, the ‘Hotel of the Bees’ as it is known, symbolic of the business of the Germans. A huge gun referred to as ‘Her Majesty’, emblematic of the queen bee, is actively fighting the incoming bombers.

Werner is part of the army and places his safety in the idea of order and bricks and mortar. Marie-Laure seems exposed. She is in a house that is already dilapidated. Her faith turns to a diamond left to her father, Daniel. Fable has it that the diamond will protect the holder. She repeats her father’s name. Marie has placed her hope in things unseen.

The bombers approach and count to twenty before releasing their payload. The use of numbers here is a precursor to Werner’s own use of numbers which the reader will discover later. Numbers are used to identify and locate an enemy, substituting the real person for a mathematical equation, taking the reality out of what they are really doing.

Marie-Laure feels a model of the city in her room. The model is in stark contrast to the world outside. Saint-Malo the model is pristine and ordered, while outside it ‘looks like an unholy tooth, something black and dangerous, a final abscess to be lanced away’. As Marie-Laure feels the model she sees the town as it used to be. A twist on the roof of a house, which is a puzzle box, provides the diamond, hope. In the cellar, Werner waits. The light bulb in the ceiling goes out and there is darkness. Despite perfect eyesight, he is seeing less than the hopeful Marie-Laure, an early reference to the title.

There are many questions raised in the initial chapter. Werner has family he remembers. Who are they? Where are they? How did our characters end up here? Why is a blind girl alone in such a treacherous predicament? These are like pieces of a puzzle, like feeling parts of an object and needing to put it together for it to make sense. This is the structure of the text. The chapter ends with a sense of isolation for the two main characters. Doerr will now retrace the events that have lead to this point, jumping back and forth from characters and the timeline, to piece this puzzle together for us.

Part Zero Quotes

The room feels flimsy, tenuous. Giant fingertips seem about to punch through its walls. ‘Papa?’ she whispers. (Marie-Laure) Part 0, Number 4 rue Vauborel

Only through the hottest fires can purification be achieved. Part 0, Cellar

Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrel, lubricated her wheels; they’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings. Part 0, The Boy

Part One: 1934

Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Zollverein, Key Pound, Radio, Take Us Home, Something Rising, Light, Our Flag Flutters Before Us, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Professor, Sea of Flames, Open Your Eyes, Fade, The Principles of Mechanics, Rumors, Bigger Faster Brighter, Mark of the Beast, Good Evening. Or Heil Hitler if You Prefer, Bye-bye Blind Girl, Making Socks, Flight, Herr Siedler, Exodus

Part One gives the reader insight to the childhood lives of the two characters already introduced. Marie-Laure is a six year old who is going blind. Her father works at the Natural History Museum. He is the locksmith and defacto guardian of the treasures of the museum. On a visit to the museum, Marie-Laure hears about one of these artefacts and its surrounding myth. The Sea of Flames diamond, Marie-Laure is told, was a stone that was picked from a dry riverbed by a prince in Borneo. On the way home he was attacked and stabbed. Instead of dying the prince recovered, holding the stone in his hand the entire time. It was concluded that the stone had special healing powers. The myth also contained a warning that as the blue stone had a touch of red at the centre so it would be that while it protected the holder of the stone, a curse would fall on those around them.

A month after the visit to the museum, Marie-Laure develops blindness. If Daniel LeBlanc, whose wife is absent and daughter is blind, is the keyholder for the stone and therefore the owner, the reader is left to wonder if the curse has already started. When Marie-Laure hears about the curse, she instantly wants to throw the stone into the sea, the only remedy for the curse. One day she will do exactly that.

Although the myth is told to the children as part of their tour to the museum, they are shown nothing more than a door, thus imagination is required for them to picture the story in their minds. The other children are fascinated by the value and cannot fathom throwing it away, a foreshadowing that selfishness versus self-sacrifice will be a decision for many characters in this novel.

Marie-Laure’s cataracts mean her blindness is permanent and her world is now a difficult place to navigate full of ‘bruises and wretchedness’. Her days are spent with her father at the key pound in the museum where we see the absolute and unadulterated devotion Daniel has to his daughter. He continually provides her with things to touch and identify, spending his nights building a scale mode of the surrounding area for her to feel and helping her with braille. He spends what appears to be his little savings on treats he places in puzzle boxes he builds for her to solve, and on braille books for her to read. Daniel spends time taking Marie-Laure places and asking her to find her own way home escorted by him. A fearful Marie-Laure often fails but as a kind father he persists, knowing that this will help her in the long term. Eventually, she finds her way home aided by her memory of the scale model. The scale model gives Marie-Laure a perspective or overview that not many use. In essence, it is a way of viewing the world, one that not many others can see. Marie-Laure also spends time with Dr Geffard, a kind man who patiently helps her explore the natural world in his specific area of science, molluscs.

Rumours begin to spread around the museum that the Germans are coming. The rumours are wildly speculative, better communication it seems is vital. Boys taunt Marie-Laure, saying the Germans will take the blind first. She holds her book as a shield; knowledge is a barrier between rumour and fact. Eventually the rumours solidify and the museum prepares to hide and save its treasures.

Werner’s childhood is also recounted in this chapter. His home is near Essen, Germany, a large coal-mining precinct. It is an impoverished time in Germany’s history when the country is burdened by agreements of repayments after the first world war. For some, jobs are hard to find and food is scarce. Many of the orphans who live with Werner and his sister Jutta, like them, have lost their fathers in coal-mining accidents. Werner sometimes visits the mines and tells Jutta that this is where their father died. That fate seems to await Werner as he will be conscripted to the mines as soon as he turns 15.

Werner finds and repairs a broken radio. This ability for logic and reasoning coupled with his fascination with science will determine his life’s journey. The radio springs to life and Werner and Jutta are fascinated by what they hear, ‘an infinitesimal orchestra’. They have opened a new world, juxtaposed to what appears to be the restricting of Marie-Laure’s world. Werner improves the radio and soon all the children at the home can hear broadcasts. They hear about a ‘new faith rising’ as well as music and plays. In different times, Werner would have enjoyed bringing music and entertainment to others through his understanding of radio. But his talents are to be used for the times and needs of his country.

One day, a labour minister comes to talk to the boys about entering the mines when they turn 15. Werner can imagine his father trapped and feels the walls closing in. In many ways, Werner will be trapped until the final days of the war. He will be trapped by the threat of a mining job, trapped by the rise of the Nazis who will dictate how his talent can and will be used, trapped by an ideology that means he cannot defend his friend Frederick at school, and eventually physically trapped in a basement beneath the Hotel of Bees.

Werner and Jutta are listening to a French professor’s broadcast. They have a sense of ‘a bigger picture’ gained through the professor’s insight and encouragement to them to ‘ open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever’. Their bigger picture mirrors the scale model version that Marie-Laure has encountered. However, this will be shattered like the radio that Werner shatters when the Germans prohibit all outside broadcasts. Jutta is displeased at the loss of her broader worldview.

The world shifts and State Youth becomes compulsory. The boys’ mantra becomes ‘live faithfully, fight bravely, die laughing’. Prejudice is unconcealed and Jews are targeted including Frau Elena, the children’s kind-hearted carer, who is a non-German.

The war intensifies. Jutta listens to a broadcast about planes bombing Paris. Marie-Laure and her father flee. He has a stone that resembles the Sea of Flames diamond. There are three counterfeits and one real. Daniel does not know if he has the real stone. An officer who has a broken radio repaired by Werner writes to a school for the elite, Schulpforta, to find a place for Werner. This will mean he escapes the mines but will be confined to the army.

Similarities abound: Werner figuring the radio, Marie-Laure figuring the puzzle boxes, both children’s lack of parents, their lives disrupted by war. Differences appear: Werner blindly following the path away from the mines despite warnings from the French professor to open his eyes, Marie-Laure remaining open to the world and truth despite her physical eyes being closed.

Part One Quotes

He says he will never leave her, not in a million years. (Daniel to Mariel-Laure) Part 1, Key Pound

Police are called: big handsome-sounding policemen with splendid voices. They break down the doors. They drag the invaders away. A patriotic march plays. Everyone is happy again. (From the play) Part 1, Something Rising

‘Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever.’ (The professor) Part 1, The Professor

‘So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?’ (The Professor) Part 1, The Professor

‘They’ll probably take the blind girls before they take the gimps.’ The first boy moans grotesquely. Marie-Laure raises her book as if to shield herself. Part 1, Mark of the Beast

That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that. Part 1, Sea of Flames

The keeper of the stone would live forever, but … misfortunes would fall on all those he loved. Part 1, The Warder

‘They’ll say … that you’re from nowhere, that you shouldn’t dream big. But I believe in you.’ (Frau Elena to Werner) Part 1, Zollverein

The despair doesn’t last. Marie-Laure is too young and her father is too patient. There are, he assures her, no such things as curses. There is luck, maybe, bad or good. A slight inclination of each day toward success or failure. But no curses. Part 1, Key Pound

Part Two: 8 August 1944

Saint-Malo, Number 4 rue Vauborel, Hotel of Bees, Down Six Flights, Trapped

Part two is another jump in time and place. On this occasion, back to Saint-Malo during the bombings. Fire, sparked by the bombs, ravages the tiny town. The town has been lifted and falls back to the earth in rubble. Among the collapsing buildings is the Hotel of Bees. Werner is trapped in the basement, trapped in absolute darkness, an emblem of his mental state under the German regime. He cannot hear due to the explosion, a plain contrast to someone who has loved radio and been tasked to find radios. Bernard and Frank Volkheimer should be there too but Werner cannot see them. He wonders if he is dead. Werner is reminded of the fate of miners from his hometown and how the labour minister would send men into the pits as fodder.

Volkheimer has a light, hope. Volkheimer has always been protective of Werner, providing food and even ignoring serious breaches of rules by Werner. The idea of protection is explored in this text highlighting that most characters need someone to look after them. There is a tender moment when Volkheimer touches the blood on Werner’s cheek, revealing the other side of this cold-blooded killing giant.

Marie-Laure’s fate is not much better. She is huddled beneath her bed holding the blue stone. She tries to logically calm herself. She is alone. As the bombers regroup offshore, she moves throughout the house counting stairs and touching walls to help guide her through the house. Marie-Laure’s blindness is constantly there but her ability often diminishes its presence.

Part Two Quotes

Marie-Laure curls into a ball beneath her bed with the stone in her left fist and the little house in her right. Part 2, Number 4 rue Vauborel

Papa Papa Papa Papa, Marie-Laure is saying, but her body seems to have detached itself from her voice, and her words make a faraway, desolate cadence. Part 2, Number 4 rue Vauborel

A light emerges, a light not kindled, Werner prays, by his own imagination: an amber beam wandering the dust. Part 2, Trapped

Part Three: June 1940

Château, Entrance Exam, Brittany, Madame Manec, You Have Been Called, Occuper, Don’t Tell Lies, Etienne, Jungmänner, Vienna, The Boches, Hauptmann, Flying Couch, The Sum of Angles, The Professor, Perfumer, Time of the Ostriches, Weakest, Mandatory Surrender, Museum, The Wardrobe, Blackbirds, Bath, Weakest (#2), The Arrest of the Locksmith

Returning to the exodus from Paris, Doerr recounts the LeBlanc duo. Father and daughter arrive at the chateau of a man to whom Daniel is supposed to pass on the stone he is carrying, real or not. They are informed that Monsieur Giannott has fled to London and many are ransacking his house. Daniel takes Marie-Laure to a barn and pretends they are staying in a hotel. Ever caring, he creates an imaginary world that will help them escape the one they are in. Marie-Laure learns from this and often blurs reality and fantasy to help her deal with difficult times. They decide to head to Saint-Malo and great Uncle Etienne’s house. Daniel explains that Etienne is 76% crazy as he sees things that are not there, ironic given Daniel has just painted an imaginary world for his daughter. The journey is arduous and Marie-Laure has walked through her stockings and is bleeding. They are both tired and wretched when they arrive at Number 4 rue Vauborel.

Werner’s trial to enter the new phase of his life has begun. An entrance exam that he is determined to pass is a rite of passage to, in his mind, a better world. A large part of the test is about physical appearance. Werner’s admirable eyesight, fair hair and blue eyes are just what the examiners are seeking. Werner wrestles with Jutta’s indifference toward him since he smashed their radio, severing her access to the outside world and new ideas. As the test progress, the boys’ ultimate challenge is to climb a ladder and fall off the ledge into the waiting blanket supported by their fellow applicants. Werner climbs the ladder, suppressing his fear, and is steadfast in jumping off the ledge without hesitation. He stands after being caught and declares ‘Heil Hitler’, a sign that he has joined the fight.

Later, Werner receives a letter confirming his acceptance and the townspeople come to congratulate him. Jutta is not pleased. Frau Elena, pseudo parent to Werner and Jutta, feigns pride, knowing better than to openly criticise the system. She too is hemmed in when the war begins.

Madame Manec takes on mothering Marie-Laure. Madame Manec cares for Marie-Laure in the same way she cares for Etienne, bathing and feeding her, and is a source of protection for the two people who need it.

At night, the radio lists messages for people: who is missing, where they are, news about children being born or pleas for forgiveness. The radio is a source of connection.

In the children’s home, Werner assures one of the children that he will ‘show them’ if he gets a chance. However, his heroics are lost on Jutta. She, through the radio, has heard a side of the story that is opposite to what they are saying in Germany, creating a sense of doubt that they should blindly follow the Fuhrer. Jutta admonishes Werner. ‘Jutta opens her eyes but doesn’t look at him. “Don’t tell lies. Lie to yourself, Werner, but don’t lie to me.”’ Her open eyes are an acknowledgement she sees truth, her not looking at Werner is a representation that he cannot see the light. Jutta’s faith is in the radio, a source of education.

Werner arrives at the school for elite German youth, Schulpforta. He has a hunger to belong and underneath the hanging portraits of Hitler the boys are moulded into what the Third Reich requires. The boys will fit the mould or be broken in the process. One boy Werner meets, Frederick, will fit the latter description. Frederick is introduced, a reedy boy who loves birds. Together they study biology, mathematics and how the Germans are superior to the Jews. Facts and fiction are mixed together so that the boys cannot discern the truth, are blinded to the truth.

Together the protagonists have new worlds to conquer and into which they must assimilate. The influence of others plays a dominant role here. The trainers at Schulpforta will distort the truth for Werner. Madame Manec will care for Marie-Laure.

In another example of selfishness versus selflessness, characters are introduced that will set out to serve their own needs above all else. They will thrive under war conditions. Their actions personify the opposite of those characters who set out to protect and serve others. Reinhold von Rumpel is a jewel expert who is tasked to confiscate and evaluate precious stones on behalf of the Nazis. He chooses not to question where large hauls of jewels have been ‘found’ and hopes to gain promotion and notoriety by assembling a collection for the Fuhrer. His relentless and unorthodox search includes trying to locate the fabled Sea of Flames diamond.

Bastian is a cruel and ruthless warrant officer at Schulpforta. He finds an environment there in which he can single out ‘the weakest’ for punishment or secure a prisoner in front of cadets for them to throw icy water upon on a cold night.

In addition to von Rumpel and Bastian, Claude is a French perfumer in the town of Saint-Malo. As war starts he quickly finds ways of buying local produce and selling it in Paris for profit. He looks for ways to preserve himself by giving information to the Germans. Part of that information is that Daniel LeBlanc is measuring the town. Although Daniel is simply measuring the town to help build a scale model for Marie-Laure, his actions are deemed suspicious and he is taken into custody by the Germans.

The connection between Marie-Laure and Werner is established in this section when it is revealed that the broadcasts that cultivated Werner’s love of science originated in the attic of Etienne’s house. The Professor is Etienne’s dead brother Henri, Marie-Laure’s grandfather. Etienne had broadcasted them to his brother hoping they would protect him in the same way Henri had protected Etienne during the war.

Part Three Quotes

‘Is it right,’ Jutta says, ‘to do something only because everyone else is doing it?’ Doubts: slipping in like eels. Werner shoves them back. Part 3, Don’t Tell Lies

Jutta opens her eyes but doesn’t look at him. ‘Don’t tell lies. Lie to yourself, Werner, but don’t lie to me.’ Part 3, Don’t Tell Lies

‘I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me.’ (Etienne) Part 3, The Professor

‘It’s only numbers, cadet’, Hauptmann says, a favourite maxim. ‘Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.’ Part 3, Blackbirds

‘A scientist’s work … is determined by two things. His interests and the interests of his time.’ (Dr Hauptmann) Part 3, The Sum of Angles

Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key. Part 3, Château

Never has he felt such a hunger to belong. (Werner at Schulpforta) Part 3, Jungmänner

Part Four: 8 August 1944

The Fort of La Cité, Atelier de Réparation, Two Cans, Number 4 rue Vauborel, What They Have, Trip Wire

Part four discloses sections of the bombing raid on Saint-Malo. The reader is alerted to the presence of von Rumpel. He is not well, cancer has taken its toll fuelling his desire to possess the healing diamond. A man of science who studied crystallography in Munich, he has now transferred his hope to the unknown, the supernatural.

In the cellar of the Hotel of Bees. Werner feels he is in atelier de reparation or the chamber of reparation, that is, a place to find a way to compensate for all the wrong he has done during the war. He needs to be practical and rebuild a radio.

In her own cellar, Marie-Laure clings to two cans hoping they are the last of Madame Manec’s peaches. She clings to memories of her father in Paris. Memory is a strong defence mechanism for many characters in the text. Marie-Laure’s survival may be attributed to her possession of the diamond. Von Rumpel approaches and enters the house.

Part Four Quotes

Atelier de réparation, thinks Werner, a chamber in which to make reparations. As appropriate a place as any. Certainly there would be people in the world who believe these three have reparations to make. Part 4, Atelier de reparation

Only a matter of time until the black vine chokes off his heart. Part 4, The Fort of La Cité

When is it day and when night? Time seems better measured by flashes: Volkheimer’s field light flicks off, flicks on. Part 4, What They Have

‘Your sister,’ says Volkheimer. ‘Think of your sister.’ (to Werner) Part 4, What They Have