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6. The Death of Walter Bernd
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
Von Rumpel has entered Etienne’s house. He looks through the rooms, hoping to find a dollhouse, which he knows contains the diamond for which he’s been hunting. Rumpel thinks about his own daughters, and wishes he could have built beautiful models for them, of the kind that Daniel built for his daughter. As he looks for the stone, the city is very quiet.
Von Rumpel seems to be getting greedier and even crazier as the story goes on—he’s not even interested in serving the Reich anymore. Doerr partly makes him a more sympathetic character by reminding us that von Rumpel has children, but this fact also shows that if he really does believe the diamond’s curse is real, then von Rumpel is willing to doom his family in order to save his own life.
Themes
