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7. Sunflowers
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
Sergeant Major von Rumpel, still suffering from his tumor treatments, is summoned to a warehouse in Lodz. There, he meets with a team tasked with inspecting diamonds. The team takes exquisite gems and measures their purity and quality. Von Rumpel is about to ask where the diamonds came from—but then he realizes that he already knows.
Von Rumpel is so caught up in his personal quest that he momentarily forgets where all these diamonds come from—they’re stolen from wealthy Jewish families who are then sent to concentration camps to be murdered. Werner probably knows very little or nothing at all about the realities of the Holocaust, but von Rumpel seems more aware—and therefore guiltier.
Themes
