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8. Fort National
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in All the Light We Cannot See, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
World War II, the Nazis, and the French Resistance
Interconnectedness and Separation
Fate, Duty, and Free Will
Family
Science and “Ways of Seeing”
Summary
Analysis
Marie-Laure hides in the radio room, desperate to eat something, and hoping that she won’t be found. Part of her wants to run out of the house, but she knows that this is foolish—she’ll be safest here. She imagines talking to Daniel. In her imagination, her father encourages her to stay where she is, even though she’s hungry.
In this passage we see how strong Marie-Laure’s relationship with her father is. Unsure of what to do, Marie-Laure summons her father as a kind of icon of wisdom. In the end, inspired by Daniel’s calmness and intelligence, she decides to stay inside.
Themes
Suddenly, Marie-Laure hears the sound of the intruder. He is urinating in the toilet on the sixth floor. He says something in German, “Das Häuschen fehlt, wo bist du Häuschen?” but Marie-Laure doesn’t know what this means. In her imagination, Marie-Laure’s father tells her not to open the cans for fear that the intruder will hear her. But suddenly a round of bombs goes off in the streets. Seizing the moment of noise, Marie-Laure uses the knife and brick to open her two cans. She eats beans, and feels better immediately.
In Paris, von Rumpel had instinctively known to look inside the model of the apartment itself, and here he notices that Etienne’s house is the only building missing from the model of Saint-Malo (in German he says,” the house is missing, where are you, house?”) It’s also unclear if he found Daniel’s letter about the “house inside the house” somewhere in the house and read it. Fortunately, Marie-Laure has apparently solved the riddle beforehand.
Themes
