All the Light We Cannot See

Long before the war begins, it exists as a rumor growing ever more persistent—a trap whose walls are closing in on the characters even as they try to convince themselves that it isn’t really happening. The war itself is an enormous trap, ensnaring everyone in one way or another, and smaller traps abound throughout the novel as synecdoches and metaphors for this larger one. The central characters develop courage and humanity as they work to free themselves and others from these traps, or they succumb to them, losing their humanity in the process.

Marie-Laure’s blindness, which develops gradually in her childhood from congenital cataracts, is an early example of entrapment. Her world becomes almost impossible to navigate: “Spaces she once knew as familiar—the four-room flat she shares with her father, the little tree-lined square at the end of their street—have become labyrinths bristling with hazards” (27). Where she could once find her way around her neighborhood alone, now she struggles to make it across a room without hurting herself. Her father’s patience and care, coupled with her own perseverance, allows her to escape this trap. He builds her a scale model of the city, which she studies with her hands until she knows it by heart. He teaches her to read braille, unlocking the imaginative worlds she finds in books. Before long, she can find her way around her neighborhood again, navigating by touch and hearing rather than sight. On each of her birthdays, he gives her a present inside an elaborately constructed puzzle box, teaching her to think systematically and strategize her way out of seemingly impossible problems. This early experience—of escaping the trap of her blindness, regaining her freedom and independence little by little—is one reason why, when the Nazi occupation arrives, Marie-Laure never falls into the traps of complacency, fear, and despair that ensnare other characters. With her mind already free, she works to free others.

In the last days of the novel’s timeline, Werner is trapped in a basement by rubble after the Allied bombing of Saint-Malo. This physical trap echoes the metaphorical trap he fell into when he entered the Schulpforta school to escape the mines he dreaded. When he failed to intervene on behalf of his friend Frederick, and when he poured cold water on a freezing prisoner, this trap became harder to escape. Only near the end of his life—when he commits treason to avoid giving away the professor’s position, and when he kills von Rumpel to save Marie-Laure—does he find the courage that sets him free.

Etienne’s agoraphobia literally traps him in his home, but it also operates as a metaphor for the fear that entraps both him and others. His fear of going outside is a result of the trauma he experienced in the first world war. Now, as the world has descended into violence and chaos again, it is as if reality has caught up with his imagination. His experience as a soldier means he could help Madame Manec and the other women of the “Old Ladies Resistance,” but—trapped by fear—he prefers to do nothing. When Madame Manec dies of pneumonia, though, his gratitude to her gives him the courage to continue her work. Later, when Marie-Laure does not return home at the appointed time, he ventures outside for the first time in over two decades to look for her. The moment is described in language that evokes the metaphors of entrapment and escape: “His heart beats icily in a faraway cage […] Twenty heartbeats. Thirty-five minutes. He twists the latch, opens the gate. Steps outside” (418). His agoraphobia has not gone away, but he is no longer willing to remain a prisoner to it.