SPOILER THREAD - OCTOBER - GLOSSARY - ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE (October 5th 2015 - start date)

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Spoiler Alert

This is the spoiler thread for the book All the Light We Cannot See.

There are articles/videos/interviews etc. which deal with this book that I am setting up a thread to add any of these items to.

Please feel free to add your own. If you cite any book or author aside from the book being discussed - you have to add the proper citation, book cover, author's photo and author's link.

This way the adds will not be disruptive to the non spoiler conversation. And you can discuss any and all of these without spoiler html because this is not the book discussion thread nor a non spoiler thread. Setting up this spoiler thread for this book will also not clutter up the book discussion thread.

by Anthony Doerr

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

We have an excellent Second World War folder here at the History Book Club and I encourage everyone to take a look at it:

Here is the link to the folder and all of the threads in that folder:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Some historical background on the burning of Saint- Malo:

The Burning of Saint Malo

PHILIP BECK
In August 1944 the historic walled city of Saint Malo, the brightest jewel of the Emerald Coast of Brittany, France, was almost totally destroyed by fire. This should not have happened.

If the attacking U.S. forces had not believed a false report that there were thousands of Germans within the city it might have been saved. They ignored the advice of two citizens who got to their lines and insisted that there were less than 100 Germans -- the members of two anti-aircraft units -- in the city, together with hundreds of civilians who could not get out because the Germans had closed the gates.

A ring of U.S. mortars showered incendiary shells on the magnificent granite houses, which contained much fine panelling and oak staircases as well as antique furniture and porcelain; zealously guarded by successive generations. Thirty thousand valuable books and manuscripts were lost in the burning of the library and the paper ashes were blown miles out to sea. Of the 865 buildings within the walls only 182 remained standing and all were damaged to some degree.

Churchill, in his History of the Second World War, said two armored and three infantry divisions were detached by Patton from the American assault forces in Normandy to clear the Brittany peninsula. The Germans, he said, "were pressed into their defensive perimeters of Saint Malo, Brest, Lorient and Saint Nazaire."

"Here," he added, "they could be penned and left to wither, thus saving the unnecessary losses which immediate assaults would have required."

This "leaving to wither" hardly happened at Saint Malo. Martin Blumenson in his book Breakout and Pursuit said few of the Americans who set out to take Saint Malo thought it would be a difficult task. But it wasn't long before the 8th Corps, and particularly the 83rd Ohio Division under General Macon, realized they had "a nasty job ahead of them."

The Germans' main defense was concentrated in five strongpoints built by the Todt Organization: to the west of the city, the La Cite fort, a vast subterranean complex carved out of a peninsula between the Rance estauary and the Bay of Saint Servan; in the Bay of Saint Malo, two fortified islands, Cezembre and the Grand Bey; and to the east, the Montaigne Saint Joseph and the La Varde fort, natural geographical features fortified with concrete, which were the first stubborn pockets of resistance encountered by the U.S. forces coming from that direction.

The garrison commander, Colonel Andreas von Aulock, a European representative of General Motors before the war, directed operations from the underground complex. The two AA sites within the city were operated by the Luftwaffe. One, on the walls of the castle at the eastern end, was commanded by Lieutenant Franz Kuster, a pre-war lawyer who subsequently became a judge in West Germany, and the other, in a little public garden facing the sea, was run by an Austrian sergeant.

To this day, a proportion of the citizens of Saint Malo believe the Germans deliberately burnt the city as an act of spite when they realized they were defeated. But all the evidence is against this.

There were many eye-witnesses to the shower of incendiaries launched by the Americans from the east, south and west of the city and the remains of a large number of these missiles were subsequently found in the ruins and identified by experts. There was no evidence of any German incendiary device having been used. In any case, it would have been illogical for Von Aulock, who certainly wasn't a fanatic, to try to burn out the city when he knew the AA units were still there. Besides, he had on the whole been attentive to the safety of the people. He had urged them on several occasions to leave the city, warning them of the horror of street fighting such as he had witnessed at Stalingrad. But a large proportion had preferred to stay because they felt they would be safer in the vast deep cellars created by Saint Malo's famed corsairs for storing their booty, than in the open country which might be transformed into a battlefield. They also feared that their houses might be looted of their valuables if left empty. Von Aulock decreed that any of his men caught looting would be shot, as would any NCO or officer who neglected his duty in this respect. Looting did take place, but the culprits were mainly civilians.

The Germans did, however, cause considerable damage in other respects. On 6 August, a minesweeper in the harbor shelled the cathedral spire which fell, causing extensive damage to the fabric. The excuse was that the spire was being used as an observation post by "terrorists." Von Aulock was furious and told Commander Breithaup, of the 12th minesweeper flotilla that the act "hardly covered the German navy with glory."

The harbor installations, including the massive lockgates, were blown up by the Germans on 7 August, and a number of vessels were scuttled there, thus ensuring that the port could not be used by the Allies.

Another German act was the rounding up of all the men between 16 and 60 in the city for internment at the Fort National, an historic fort on an islet near the castle, only accessible at low tide. This was Von Aulock's revenge for a skirmish which took place in the city on the night of 5-6 August. He was told that "terrorists" had fired on Germans. The French said it was a fight between German soldiers and mutinous sailors; there had been a marked slackening of discipline in the navy.

Unfortunately the fort was in the line of fire between the Americans coming from the east and the fortified island known as Le Grand Bey and inevitably a shell eventually fell in the midst of the several hundred hostages killing or mortally wounding 18.

The old city itself suffered from the exchange of fire between the Americans and the big guns in the underground fort. Many buildings were hit by shells as well as bombs dropped by aircraft.

However, if the damage had been restricted to shells and bombs, most of the city would have been spared. It was the concentrated attack with incendiary mortar shells which destroyed most buildings.

The Americans' belief in the presence of a large number of Germans within the city was fortified by two incidents. On 10 August, two jeeps carrying four Americans and five Frenchmen tried to enter the city by the main gate. The party was under the mistaken impression that it had been liberated. They came under a hail of machinegun fire. An American officer and two of the French were killed and the others taken prisoner.

The following day a truck carrying clothing and ammunition for the Resistance also tried to get in. The two occupants were captured and the vehicle was burnt.

These attacks were the work of the Luftwaffe men on the AA sites but the Americans watching about 500 yards away could well have thought in the confusion of the incidents that the defenders were a much larger force.

However, it is hard to understand why they were scornful of the news brought by the two French emissaries from the city. Yves Burgot and Jean Vergniaud were sent from the castle where they had been sheltering to ask for morphia for the wounded Americans and Germans. They were received coolly by an officer who asked how many Germans remained in the city. They told him there were less than a hundred but he would not accept this and the shelling and burning continued.

A truce was arranged on 13 August to allow the people to get out of the city. By this time a large part of it was either in flames or had been destroyed. The firemen could do little to prevent the spread of the fires as the Americans had severed the water main.

The Americans attacked with tanks on 14 August and, to their undoubted surprise, found the burning city almost empty.

The underground fortress continued to fight until August 17 when Von Aulock surrendered. He was subsequently accused of "the barbaric act of burning the corsairs' city," but after an examination of the ruins including the remains of incendiary shells and the questioning of witnesses, he was vindicated.

Source: Bibliographic information
Author: Philip Beck
Title: The burning of Saint Malo
Source: The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)
Date: Winter 1981
Issue: Volume 2 number 4
Location: Page 301
ISSN: 0195-6752

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Saint Malo today:

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

More:

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Map:

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

We will begin this discussion on October 5th.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Martin responded to Pamela - BOOK AS A WHOLE SPOILER

(view spoiler)[Pamela - right on re the color metaphor. Not sure if you picked it up, but it seems to me the book is riffing to a large degree on Moby Dick's two "white" chapters, where Melville explores the dual nature of white: all color, and simultaneously no color.

Several times he notes that the brain, encased in darkness creates a world of light. Interesting that an argument can be made that the blind character is most aware of the external (light) world.

But I also see white as transcendent. Both Werner and Jutta have shocking white hair - other worldly. I immediately thought of the alien protragonist in Michael Crummey's Galore. But also the nature of light.

In the philosophy of the awakened mind (mind again), there is a metaphor for two types of wisdom. One is the light of the sun. Direct, it's light reveals without ambiguity all the objects under it. But, can you see the stars and heavens?

The wisdom associated with the sun is obviously important. But it is secondary to the reflected light of the moon.

The moon's light is shed on all objects below, but not at the expense of the heavens. Note the many references to the music Claire de Lune (light of the moon), and other references to moon light. "God is only a white cold eye, a quarter moon poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, blinking as the city is pounded to dust." (p.393)

In my reading, at least, there is a relationship between the masculine light of Werner, his scientific knowledge a manifestation of the sun's light, and the feminine wisdom of his sister Jutta. It's interesting that in the end Werner is gravitating to a more ambiguous and compassionate wisdom.

In the end, (p.516) we learn of Marie-Laure's possession of the last recording by her uncle to survive the conflagration of the war: "It was about the moon."

Jutta: "I remember. And light? On the other side?"

Great stuff. (hide spoiler)]


by Michael Crummey

by Herman Melville

[Pamela]

responding to Martin

(view spoiler)[ Wow, Martin! Some really excellent points. I would never have seen the bit about Melville and yet it slots right into my favorite descriptive passages in the book which occur as we first meet Werner and Jutta as children in Zollverein. Doerr describes Werner's hair as "...Snowy, milky, chalky. A color that is the absence of color." Later in the same chapter, he calls them "...two snowy haired children in a bottomland of soot...". thus juxtaposing the light symbolising children against the darkness of their environment. (pgs. 24 & 26., Kindle ed.)

As to Marie Laure, I think that is her role. Through her we relate to the world on different levels than we would normally. Her reaction to the natural world of the mollusks and shells she comes to love is tactile and intimate. The experience of making the journey to St. Malo gives us a quite different view of the panic and confusion. We smell the odors of tired people and stale food and tobacco; hear the panic in voices looking for a way out; smell the smoke of burning buildings, all without the cohesion that sight brings. But it's her reaction to the first "sight" of the ocean and beach at St. Malo that shows how complete her awareness of the external world can be. She experiences it with every sense available to her and in Doerr's description of her reaction you forget for a moment that she's blind.
(Chap.11, pg.29; Chaps. 31,37, 39; Chap. 71, pgs 231-232)

There's also the fact that Marie Laure sees in color --- another form of light, of course. ( Chap. 8, pg 44)


Basically, I think the thing to take from the meaning of the title is that even if you are absolutely positive it is full dark, the light is there. (hide spoiler)]

[Martin]

Pamela wrote: " responding to Martin

Wow, Martin! Some really excellent points. I would never have seen the bit about Melville and yet it slots right into my favorite descriptive passages in the book which oc..."

Just to add to your wunnerful observations, consider the mind itself as a sense able to perceive. It is afterall the switchboard and database for the traditional five senses. The mind, here and elsewhere, arguably can be seen as a sixth sense, I think.

The title points toward seeing that which is there, but cannot be seen.

I don't think we need to observe the spoiler protocol in this thread, no?

[Pamela]

Martin wrote: "Pamela wrote: " responding to Martin

Wow, Martin! Some really excellent points. I would never have seen the bit about Melville and yet it slots right into my favorite descriptive passages in th..."

Good point. It also gives me at least one reason for something that bothered me all the way through the book. Why make Marie Laure blind? I understand it's a hook. Every book needs one but it seems unnecessarily dramatic here. However if, as you say, the mind is to be viewed as a sixth sense, then she can be seen as a beacon through which to look at it. She is the "light", so to speak, that shines on every thing she comes in contact with and the people with whom she relates and we should look closely.

[Martin]

Well said. Beacon is right.

It is also worth noting that in the end, she senses the hum of human activity of people going about their ordered daily lives. It brought to my mind white noise, which is the background from which our senses, then our selves emanate, once again according to some philosophies, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.

This book is well populated with allusions to eastern philosophies, as best I can tell.

[Pamela]

Well, it did take Doerr 10 years to write it. It certainly is well crafted and ultimately multi layered. I have been re-reading it for this discussion since I read it the first time almost a year ago. I find more this time around, but not nearly so much as you have, Martin.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Pamela wrote: "Martin wrote: "Pamela wrote: " responding to Martin

Wow, Martin! Some really excellent points. I would never have seen the bit about Melville and yet it slots right into my favorite descriptive...”

You are fine here but I did put your post in spoilers because we are just at the beginning of the read and I did not want to spoil it for others - in case they wandered over here not knowing what to expect.

[Martin]

Another theme that grabbed my attention is the radio and
Werer's play on how central it was to the Nazis.

For instance (p.63): "Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth...the staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subject lean toward its branches as if toward the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for someone who can put things right.

"Only through the hottest fires, whispers the radio, can purification be achieved. Only through the harshest tests can God's chosen rise."

The media guru Marshall McLuhan (see his Understanding Media) early on the notion that electronic media gives control of the message to the end user. Case in point is both the state, to broadcast propaganda, but also the individual (Etienne and the freedom fighters).

The Internet is little more than an extension of this reality. The difference is one of degree. Every fool with a keyboard plugged into the network today has a global audience of billions of eyes.

It's worth noting that both governments, insurrectionists, terrorists, and individuals are all using the digital network to great advantage. It's not unlike the radio in AtLWCS, just further along the continuum (wave?) of history.

by Marshall McLuhan

[Martin]

!!!BEWARE!!!BIG, BIG SPOILERS AHEAD!!!TURN BACK NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!! (But, while you're here, let me ask you something: why are you in the spoiler thread if you're averse to them?)

Terry raised these questions over in the other thread, but because the answers to them obviously lead waaaaay into spoiler territory, I thought I'd respond here:

We start the story at ground Zero, knowing nothing of Marie-Laure and Werner. The story starts in 1944. You mentioned that the constant shifting was off-putting, was that like the action in the story?

I can't help but wonder whether starting at ground zero might not be a nod to Gravity's Rainbow, which starts "Beyond Zero," which at the moment I'm going to argue is where AtLWCS comes to rest.

The opening epigraph of GR offers us this insight:

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." --Wernher von Braun

AtLWCS also addresses "transformation" (p.245): "Sublimity," Hauptman says, panting, "you know what that is, Pfennig?"..."It's the instant when one thing is about to become something else. Day to night, caterpillar to butterfly. Fawn to doe. Experiment to result. Boy to man."

It's not unfair to conclude that transformation is the natural course of events.

There is another element of zero that might come into play here that describes transformation that I think is apt. Mythically, the ouroboros (circle depicting a snake swallowing its tail) has been used through the ages to portray time...or should that be Time?

The ouroboros, like all circles, has no beginning, no end. It is a far more accurate description of time than the linear conception of past, present, future. This not to deny the value of past, present, future, just that at best it is an incomplete description of time because it does have a beginning, middle, and end so cleanly differentiated from one another..

In the decade before WW II, science, physics specifically, discovered what mythology knew ages before: time is spatial. We still have trouble with that truth because most of us are governed by linear time, the clock on the wall, the weekly planner, the monthly calendar, the years lined up in numerical sequence.

We go back in time to get some background on the two characters. As we meet each one, the chapters grow a bit in length. We get a bigger picture of each one. Then we come to Part Two. Back to the future. It is a short and abrupt part of the story. It begins as quickly as it ends. What is happening during this part? Does the abruptness of book structure mimic the action of the story?

Now we're back to Part Three, back in 1940, learning more about our characters. What has happened to their lives? What becomes of them, of their economic status?

Since time is spatial, "the past is never dead. It's not even past." as Billy Faulkner noted. And the future is not to come, in effect it's here.

By breaking up linear time into pictures of a puzzle, this book offers the reader the opportunity to put together the picture presented by the author as a unified, spatial whole.

It's possible to see the characters' past, present, future not as a line, but as integrated space.

Let's take Werner. (Aside: is it coincidence that Werner's name is a measley h you cannot hear short of Wernher von Braun's given name? I think not.)

He is the child of science, that is the rational, logical, empirical pursuit of truth. It can recognize truth directly, or like myth, indirectly. Specifically, in AtLWCS we see that if two vertices of a triangle are known, the third can be determined with deadly accuracy.

But Werner becomes troubled when he enters the system of the National Political Institutes of Education. The persecution of his friend Frederick, and Werner's decision not to intervene on Frederick's behalf, as well as the transformation (that word again) of other boys into pawns of the Nazi political system cause Werner to develop the luxury of morality - thoughts of what is good and bad, right and wrong.

It's recollections (delving into the past) of his sister Jutta, his feminine twin, that serve as the second known vertex of the triangle that eventually includes Marie-Laure as the third point. And in completing that triangle, Werner's last that leads to his last and most meaningful change in his life, the child of electronic technology is transformed spiritually, just as Werhner, with the h you cannot hear, said.

byThomas Pynchon

[Teri]

Hey Martin ~ Thanks for these comments. That tells me I'm reading into the story what I should be. I think that your message above doesn't spoil things for this coming weeks reading. I need to read through it again, but I think you can post the above after tomorrow (Monday the 12th), safely in a spoiler tag.

Maybe the ouroboros part is too forward for now, but we do get into talking about the Whelk in our 2nd week.

[Martin]

I prefer to post in the spoiler thread, thanks.

[Teri]

Yes, but others can't benefit from your knowledge that are not following this thread.. ;-)

[Martin]

I'm much flattered you would think so. If nothing else, writing about what I've read without the fetters of worrying about whether something is a spoiler helps me better understand what it is that I've read.

For instance, in addition to the "spiritual" triangulating of Werner and Jutta to locate Marie-Lauer, Werner employs the technology triangulating he developed to pinpoint freedom fighters. It is the convergence of the technological and the spiritual of the Werhner von Braun epigraph in Gravity's Rainbow.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Martin I think you are best here on this thread - because you are free to expound here and just give big spoiler alerts like you have been doing and then we can say that everybody has been warned

[Pamela]

ALSO BIG SPOILER ALERT!
Sorry for the delay but rl has been getting in the way.

Martin, I've not read Gravity's Rainbow but I see the point you're making. What I don't see is the necessity for it. This is already a complicated book and adding yet one more layer of meaning that, for me at least, doesn't really do all that much to enhance the story just made for a minor distraction. The major metaphor here, the one that unites the whole book, is the light theme and introducing a new one of Time detracts from that, if only slightly. It doesn't harm it but it doesn't help it either.

The best image of transformation occurs in the last chapter when Marie Laure is imagining the electromagnetic waves emanating from her grandson's gamer and she then says this, "And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough?" Chap. 178, pg.529

The radio connection obviously is central to the whole plot. It defines Werner from the first: "He hears a fizz of static. Then, from somewhere deep inside the earpiece, a stream of consonants issues forth. Werner’s heart pauses; the voice seems to echo in the architecture of his head." and later, "Yet now there is music. As if, inside Werner’s head, an infinitesimal orchestra has stirred to life." Chap. 12, pg.33

It's lure drives Werner to become a scientist and eventually allows him to acquiesce in the persecution of Frederick and the death of the prisoner, even though the words of his moral base, Jutta, nag at his thoughts so much that he can no longer even write to her. Eventually the radio will finally unite him with, as you put it, the third point of the triangle, Marie Laure.

This such a finely crafted novel that I am sure you are right and Doerr pieced it together to mean exactly what you are saying about spatial Time. Even the one or two things that bother me are only mild annoyances, things you might call style disagreements. they are certainly nothing that distract from the beauty of the writing or even the overall flow of the novel and, of course, it's impossible to say if it would have been better written in some other way.

by Thomas Pynchon

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Thanks Pamela

[Vincent]

Martin wrote: "I'm much flattered you would think so. If nothing else, writing about what I've read without the fetters of worrying about whether something is a spoiler helps me better understand what it is that ..."

I am only reading the spoiler thread now as I choose not to read it as I progressed through the book - and I agree with Bentley that if you are most comfortable here it is where you should be - (and I agree with Teri that we miss your comments going through the book but it is only a month)

I do believe the Russians that Werner and his pals are looking for are soldiers - do you glamorize them by calling them "freedom fighters" - as the Germans invaded Russia were not all Russians "freedom fighters"? - would that apply to those conscripted?

Also better for a four week read that you are in the spoilers as otherwise I would lose/use too much time thinking on your comments.

Thanks

Vince