All the Light We Cannot See Literary Devices

Definition of Metaphor

A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition

A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition

A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition

Explanation and Analysis—Her Majesty:

In Section Zero, Doerr introduces readers to Werner Pfennig, a young soldier in the German military forced to fight for the Nazi regime. Readers meet Werner in media res, in the midst of battle and cannon fire. Doerr describes one particular cannon from the perspective of Werner's fellow soldiers, using both simile and metaphor to accurately portray their attitude towards the weapon:

Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrels, lubricated her wheels; they’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings. The royal acht acht, a deathly monarch meant to protect them all.

In this excerpt, Doerr uses both simile and metaphor to compare the Austrian soldiers' cannon to a queen bee, dubbed their "deathly monarch." They worship her and service her needs as one might a queen, because she is their chief source of protection and assurance. This metaphor also calls to mind the idea that some young men "worship" at the altar of war, viewing it as a noble and glorious venture. Notably, though the "Austrians" seem to worship at war's altar, Werner, conspicuously excluded from her list of acolytes, does not.

Explanation and Analysis—Ribs:

In Section Zero, Doerr describes the devastation of Saint Malo, using imagery and metaphor to paint a vivid picture of the destruction:

In stormy light, its granite glows blue. At the highest tides, the sea creeps into basements at the
very center of town. At the lowest tides, the barnacled ribs of a thousand shipwrecks stick out
above the sea.

Saint-Malo and its surroundings include the "barnacled ribs of a thousand shipwrecks." These ships both represent the physical wreckage of war and the human wreckage. The ships' torn hulls may visually resemble human ribcages, split open to reveal their innards to the ocean. This metaphor emphasizes the extent of the infrastructural destruction caused by war, but it also provides an indirect commentary on war's human cost. Through visual imagery, Doerr forges a connection between the decimated ships and the decimated bodies of soldiers, many of whom are likely buried with the ships, their ribcages also open to the sea. The "bodies" of the ships lying in the harbor symbolize the bodies of dead men: disregarded, left to rot, a second thought amidst the ongoing carnage and strategic maneuvering of war. Like these ships, bodies lie abandoned, unclaimed, unburied, awaiting peacetime to reach their final resting place.

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Explanation and Analysis—Textured Kindgom:

In Section One, Marie-Laure tragically loses her vision. Her father, Daniel, does everything he can to accommodate his daughter's emergent needs, including bringing her to work with him at the museum. While Daniel works, Marie-Laure observes the work of scientists and staff, honing her other senses on the museum's unique natural specimens. Doerr uses both imagery and metaphor to describe one such specimen, a shell:

The murex Dr. Geffard keeps on his desk can entertain her for a half hour, the hollow spines, the ridged whorls, the deep entrance; it’s a forest of spikes and caves and textures; it’s a kingdom.

In this passage, Doerr uses vivid figurative language, describing Marie-Laure's use of touch as a sensorial experience akin to "seeing" the shell. Marie-Laure's textural experience of the shell appears far richer than that of a sighted person: she imagines entire forests, caves, and kingdoms under her fingers, where a sighted person might only see "spikes." Blindness restricts Marie-Laure's sensory experience of the world. In the absence of sight, other senses expand their capacity, and under Marie-Laure's careful touch, entire worlds blossom. Through imagery, Doerr conveys this shift in the senses, focusing on the ways in which Marie-Laure's world grows richer for her lack of sight.

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Explanation and Analysis—Hungry Fish:

Towards the end of Section One, Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris as Nazi planes drop bombs on the city and its escaping citizenry. This experience is an out-of-body one for both father and daughter, who struggle to comprehend the enormity of the change wrought in their lives. As ever, Doerr's characters contend with their traumatic reality through imagery and imagination. Marie-Laure's father, Daniel LeBlanc, processes the bombing through metaphor:

In the lurid, flickering light, he sees that the airplane was not alone, that the sky teems with them, a dozen swooping back and forth, racing in all directions, and in a moment of disorientation, he feels that he’s looking not up but down, as though a spotlight has been shined into a wedge of bloodshot water, and the sky has become the sea, and the airplanes are hungry fish, harrying their prey in the dark.

In this instance of metaphor, Daniel LeBlanc compares the German planes bombing Paris to "hungry fish" who "[harry] their prey in the dark." Doerr's use of figurative language in this passage embodies the disorienting nature of evacuation, displacement, and war on Daniel's psyche—he imagines the sky as an ocean and the planes as fish in an attempt to distance himself from reality.

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Explanation and Analysis—Jutta and Werner:

In the following passage from Section 5, Werner grapples with his separation from Jutta during his time serving in the German military. He views his connection to her as a weakness, in large part as a consequence of social and institutional pressure from his mentors and peers in the German military. Werner is conditioned to view his sister this way by circumstance, a reality Doerr unpacks through metaphor:

Though in Werner’s weaker moments, he resents those same qualities in his sister. Perhaps she’s the impurity in him, the static in his signal that the bullies can sense. Perhaps she’s the only thing keeping him from surrendering totally.

In this excerpt, Doerr utilizes metaphor to compare Jutta to an "impurity" or "static in [Werner's] signal"—something, in other words, that must be fixed. As a consequence of German military propaganda and ideals of masculinity, Werner perceives his emotional connection to Jutta as the one thing holding him back from being accepted by his peers. In effect, those surrounding Werner have done everything possible to strip him of his human empathy: discouraging emotional connections to family, discouraging the formation of positive community, discouraging sympathy for the downtrodden and "weak." It is a testament to Werner's character—or perhaps, to humanity—that he ultimately resists these pressures.

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All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See: Metaphors 5 key examples