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7. Grotto
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
It is January, 1943. Werner continues monitoring radio transmissions on the Russian front. Whenever he finds a new radio transmission, Volkheimer and the troops go to kill the broadcasters. The troops travel through Minsk, Prague, and other areas of Eastern Europe.
Werner isn’t the man who personally kills enemy soldiers, but he’s making this possible by monitoring the radio. Volkheimer might be kind to Werner and seem to have a good heart, but he is still a brutal weapon on behalf of the Nazis, and seems to have no intention of changing that fact.
Themes
At times, the troops will be passing by a trainload of prisoners. Sometimes, Volkheimer will have the train stopped, and he will switch boots, shirts, or coats with a prisoner. The prisoners are always reluctant to switch clothes with Volkheimer—especially boots, since this means the prisoner will die of the cold. One day, the troops pass by a young German soldier with twitching eyes—Neumann One explains that frostbite destroyed his eyelids. Werner writes nothing to Jutta.
Here Volkheimer again shows his callousness. At the National Institute, he had acted as if he saw through the “prisoner routine,” but here, it seems as if he’s learned his lessons after all, and has decided that it’s “kill or be killed.” Volkheimer takes warm clothes from the prisoners, effectively sentencing them to die of the cold weather.
Themes
