Werner’s lesson in reality reaches its climax when he leads his unit in search of a hidden radio. Neumann Two is startled to come across a mother and child in hiding and kills them, leaving Werner to find “inside the closet […] not a radio but a child sitting on her bottom with a bullet through her head” (368). The disturbingly light diction of the bouncing “b” sounds and the euphemistic use of “bottom” emphasize the victim’s age, while the disconnection between style and reality highlights the truth in the idea that “in wartime, small choices can have vast consequences” (New Yorker 85). The power of seemingly insignificant action is demonstrated repeatedly from when Werner decides to avoid the mines at all costs, to when he fails to stand
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Malo, August 1944, when Marie-Laure ‘saves’ Werner in terms of moral redemption, proving Doerr’s larger point that there is “light we cannot see” in all of us. Wartime affiliation falls away as Werner, trapped and starving in the basement of the Hotel of Bees in Saint-Malo, hears Marie-Laure reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea through the radio- the purity in her storytelling drawing him back to the moral words of Jutta. When Werner hears her hiss that the German Sergeant is on the floor below the attic before “the broadcast cuts out” (393)- putting out the light her voice brought into the basement- he decides he will “do something. Save her” (393), despite the danger it would put him in. His short imperative sentences help communicate his determination, and the broken syntax could indicate the encroachment of …show more content…
On the day Jutta is raped, it is on a beautiful May day- a purposeful contradiction of the stereotype that such an event would occur on a rainy, cold day. In the “Hotel of Bees”, Werner listens to "eight Luftwaffe men, none of whom will survive the hour, singing a love song to their queen" (8), a high-velocity anti-air gun. The absurdity of song in such a situation brings an odd lightness to the scene, as if showing the men’s desire to serve and die in loyalty- just like the bees they parallel- despite their imminent deaths. In August 1944, the bombers that "cross the Channel at midnight" (4), to kill and maim, “are named for songs: Stardust […] and Pistol-Packin’ Mama” (4), oddly comic names, while Saint-Malo, a beautiful and ancient French seaside town, their target, is “an unholy tooth, black and dangerous” (4). This perspective is then reversed after only a page, as Marie-Laure kneels admiring the charming model city of St. Malo her father built with its “miniature bench[es], the smallest no larger than apple seed[s]” (5). Paralleled with the intricate delicacy of the model, Marie-Laure seems graceful and innocent, protecting what she loves, just as the bombardiers were following orders of their air force
Malo, August 1944, when Marie-Laure ‘saves’ Werner in terms of moral redemption, proving Doerr’s larger point that there is “light we cannot see” in all of us. Wartime affiliation falls away as Werner, trapped and starving in the basement of the Hotel of Bees in Saint-Malo, hears Marie-Laure reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea through the radio- the purity in her storytelling drawing him back to the moral words of Jutta. When Werner hears her hiss that the German Sergeant is on the floor below the attic before “the broadcast cuts out” (393)- putting out the light her voice brought into the basement- he decides he will “do something. Save her” (393), despite the danger it would put him in. His short imperative sentences help communicate his determination, and the broken syntax could indicate the encroachment of …show more content…
On the day Jutta is raped, it is on a beautiful May day- a purposeful contradiction of the stereotype that such an event would occur on a rainy, cold day. In the “Hotel of Bees”, Werner listens to "eight Luftwaffe men, none of whom will survive the hour, singing a love song to their queen" (8), a high-velocity anti-air gun. The absurdity of song in such a situation brings an odd lightness to the scene, as if showing the men’s desire to serve and die in loyalty- just like the bees they parallel- despite their imminent deaths. In August 1944, the bombers that "cross the Channel at midnight" (4), to kill and maim, “are named for songs: Stardust […] and Pistol-Packin’ Mama” (4), oddly comic names, while Saint-Malo, a beautiful and ancient French seaside town, their target, is “an unholy tooth, black and dangerous” (4). This perspective is then reversed after only a page, as Marie-Laure kneels admiring the charming model city of St. Malo her father built with its “miniature bench[es], the smallest no larger than apple seed[s]” (5). Paralleled with the intricate delicacy of the model, Marie-Laure seems graceful and innocent, protecting what she loves, just as the bombardiers were following orders of their air force