Marie-Laure In All The Light We Cannot See
Imagine waking up in the morning, opening your eyes and being greeted not with the familiarity of your bedroom ceiling, but with darkness. Naturally you’d be startled, but once you got past the initial shock, you’d be able conjure up an image of your bedroom from your imagination, clumsily bump your way through the room, and generally navigate through the house, right? Of course you would. The blind are not helpless, and can sometimes “see” more than we can. But wait- if you can’t see, how did you know where your bed was? Where the wall was? Or the door? Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See, uses Marie-Laure, a young blind girl, to help illustrate one of the main themes in his book -that light and substance only truly exists in your head- with an extensive use of metaphors and descriptions.
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After losing her sight, she re-learns the world around her; this time focusing more on the sensory aspects that most take for granted. The author understands that our sight is often overpowering, and that occasionally insight and understanding of the things around us can be lost when we forget to focus on the smell, the feel, and the sounds of our surroundings. Marie paints her own picture in her mind using her remaining senses rather than relying on the one painted by her eyes like the rest of us. For example, when visiting the ocean for the first time, instead of noticing the ‘white sea foam’ or the ‘dazzling blue water’, she takes the time to appreciate the “cold round pebbles beneath her feet. Now crackling weeds. Now something smoother: wet, unwrinkled sand. She bends and spreads her fingers. It’s like cold
After losing her sight, she re-learns the world around her; this time focusing more on the sensory aspects that most take for granted. The author understands that our sight is often overpowering, and that occasionally insight and understanding of the things around us can be lost when we forget to focus on the smell, the feel, and the sounds of our surroundings. Marie paints her own picture in her mind using her remaining senses rather than relying on the one painted by her eyes like the rest of us. For example, when visiting the ocean for the first time, instead of noticing the ‘white sea foam’ or the ‘dazzling blue water’, she takes the time to appreciate the “cold round pebbles beneath her feet. Now crackling weeds. Now something smoother: wet, unwrinkled sand. She bends and spreads her fingers. It’s like cold