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Fate vs. Free Will
Throughout World War II, many of the characters have some sort of struggle between fate and free will. From the very beginning, Werner tries to avoid his fate of coal-mining by putting matters in his own hands. He fixed radios and studied technology on his own time. His hard work earned him a spot in Hitler Youth. However, like Haruki Murakami said, "Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?". Werner manages to escape his fate of coal-mining but now he is trapped in a smaller and tighter system of the Nazi regime. When he first enters Nazi school, Frederick tells him, “Your problem, Werner, is that you still believe you own your life” meaning that the Nazis are now they are in full control of what he does. However as Werner advances through his career, Werner defies the Nazi state of mind and questions the objectives of his job. Is it necessary to kill all these people? What makes them different from him? “How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?” Werner realizes that the only way he can answer that question is if he breaks out of the Nazi mold and forces himself to see the war in a perspective different other than Nazi Germany's. Werner had the choice of reporting Marie for transmitting broadcasts but he chose to keep it a secret. By living his life his own way and going against fate, Werner was able to save Marie's life.
Another character who faces the struggle between fate and free will is Madame Manec. Instead of having the Germans determine her fate and tell her what she can and cannot do, she risks her life starting a resistance movement. She confronts those who just stand by and asks them, "Don't you want to be alive before you die?" meaning, don't you want to make your own decisions and live your life your own way before you die?
The German Sergeant Major von Rumpel was also seen to try to escape fate's wrath. He was told that he had four months left to live. He tries to go against it by searching for the Sea of Flames hoping that it'll give him eternal life.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
#1) Anthony Doerr writes, “Isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it, stuffing things into it". Can people choose what they get corrupted by?
#2) Was it by fate or through free will that Marie and Werner met each other?
#3) Do you think that von Rumpel could've escaped his fate if he had the Sea of Flames? Do you think the Sea of Flames is the real deal or do you think that it's just a legend? Did its power work on Marie? Explain.
Blindness
When we flashback to when Werner was eight, we see him and Jutta lying near the radio and listening to a banned foreign science and engineering broadcast. The Frenchman (Etienne) that lead the broadcast said, “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever”. Throughout the novel, Werner struggles with this concept because he is "blind"/close-minded. He views World War II from a single perspective: through the eyes of Nazi Germany. It wasn't until he gets exposed to the horrors of Nazi training and to the humanity of the people he kills that he truly understands the world around him.
Anthony Doerr made sure readers understood what being blind meant. He wrote, "To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness.Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air.” Even if people were to have perfect 20/20 vision, they may still refuse to see the world around them. Being blind does not mean the person is now living in a different world than others, it just means that the person is seeing the same world differently. Being blind gives Marie an advantage in that she is more sensitive to the beauty around her. Take for instance the first time she goes to the beach. The beauty of the sea gets magnified through her other senses: she gets overwhelmed by the sounds, the smells and the feels of the the waves coming in that she connects it to the feeling of freedom. While other people may see the ocean clearly, they are unable to appreciate the beauty of it and the freedom that comes along with it.
When Marie became blind, she learned that “To really touch something....is to love it.” Since she was blind, it was hard for Marie to navigate the streets on her own so her father created her a model of the entire city. The more she touched the buildings and streets in her model, the more she loved Saint-Malo. She appreciated each structure no matter its flaws and found beauty in jags and crooked edges. Being blind allowed her to break through a bunch of barriers like the power of aesthetics. She isn't as possessive of the Sea of Flames because to her, it is just a small and smooth stone. It also causes her to break through walls of prejudice and to not judge Werner based on his German background and Nazi uniform.
At the end of one of the broadcasts, Etienne challenges his listeners: “The brain is locked in total darkness. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
The title of the book says it all.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
#1) Do you think Marie's blindness helps Marie make the choice of releasing the Sea of Flames into the sea since she isn't able to see the physical appearance of it?
#2) At the end of one of Etienne's broadcasts, Etienne challenges his listeners: “The brain is locked in total darkness. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?” What do you think of this quote and what can light symbolize?
#3) How did being blind make Marie perceive the war differently?
Women and Femininity
Props to Anthony Doerr for being a man and writing a novel with kickass female characters. You've probably noticed how most of the male characters (von Rump, Etienne, and Werner) were more confined and for the most part did things without questioning. They didn't take risks as much as the female characters did because they were scared of getting in trouble. But, “isn't doing nothing a kind of troublemaking”? Madame Manec asked Etienne this when Etienne tries to talk her out of continuing the resistance movement. Madame Manec is a diehard liberal and is a boss-ass b****. She believes that the people who just stand there are just as bad as the Germans. She risks her life going through town to hand food and supplies to families who need them. Although Madame Manec was a minor character and lived a short life, she raised Marie to stand up for herself while her father was gone.
After Madame Manec dies, her words "Don't you want to be alive before you die?" lingers in Marie's head. Marie continues Madame Manec's legacy and continues handing out supplies to the needy and visiting the bakery for bread with coordinates baked inside them. Marie's spirit inspires Etienne to come out of his shell and reconnect and listen to the radio.
If Jutta lived in Saint-Malo, she would've been best buds with Madame Manec. Like they would've legit conquered the world together. She views the war in a worldly perspective and does not fall for the Nazi propaganda. She questions everything she hears and challenges Werner to do the same. When Werner tells Jutta that he wants to join Hitler Youth, she asks him, "is it right to do something only because everyone else is doing?". Jutta is so open-minded and one day when she came home from school, Jutta tells Werner, "A girl got kicked out of the swimming hole today. Inge Hachmann. They said they wouldn’t let us swim with a half-breed. Unsanitary. A half-breed, Werner. Aren’t we half-breeds too? Aren’t we half our mother, half our father?"
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
#1) Marie is the first girl to possess the Sea of Flames and first person to return it to the sea. What made her return the Sea of Flames into the sea? What makes her so different from all the other men who possessed it?
#2) How did the war and society shape the beliefs of the male characters?
#3) What causes the female characters to be more liberal than the male characters?
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