Jacqueline Hochheiser, Corporate Communications
Into the Light
The new Netflix series, All the Light We Cannot See, is based on the 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Anthony Doerr, set during the later years of World War II. The short-wave radio becomes the decisive tool for the victory of a tiny seaside French town called Saint-Malo against the occupying Nazi regime. It is also the catalyst for an unlikely alliance between the two young protagonists living completely different lives in the throes of the war.
The radio serves as a conduit of hope throughout the series for both of our protagonists. The series title is, while linked to several motifs of the story, is most obviously a nod to the female protagonist, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, who is blind and living through the occupation in St. Malo on the North coast of France. While she is at a disadvantage both with her visual impairment and because she is a young woman in the 1940s, she beats the odds and expectations against her repeatedly throughout the events of the plot. As the story evolves, the radio becomes a tool that gives her power to survive through the peril of wartime – and to transcend her immediate circumstances.
Werner Pfennig, a quiet German orphan considered a genius for his prodigious skills with electronics, and radio circuits in particular, finds solace in a forbidden radio broadcast (all non-state radio transmissions were banned under the Reich) given by a mysterious “professor” who lectures at length about the natural phenomena of the world. When he is unwillingly drafted into the German army, it is his skills with the radio that gives Werner a chance at survival and gradually lead his story to intersect with Marie’s.
The Secrets of Marie-Laure LeBlanc
The Marie-Laure LeBlanc we come to know early in the series lives with her father in Paris. Marie’s father works at a natural history museum and is a master key maker charged with the security of the precious objects there, including an infamous gemstone called the Sea of Flames. It is said that whoever touches the stone is gifted eternal life, but at great cost to his family and loved ones. It is suggested that his association with the stone has brought on Marie’s blindness and the apparent absence of her mother, though neither Marie nor her father admit to believing the superstition.
To help Marie cope with her blindness, due in part to his apparent guilt for her condition as well as his fear for her future, her father builds her a small model of Paris designed to scale so that she can memorize the city from within her own home and be confident navigating the streets of her neighborhood alone. While the model gave Marie the freedom to explore the wider world, she also found adventure exploring her imagination in a broadcast that she listened to every night given by the “professor.” These broadcasts are about natural phenomena in the real world, to teach children of the things that surround them. Marie finds comfort in it as a child, and continues to listen to the broadcasts even during the throes of war when the Germans attack.
When German forces take over Paris, Marie and her father are forced to flee to a small seaside village called Saint-Malo. Once there, the pair reconnect with relatives, and Marie figures out that her Uncle Etienne, a war veteran who spends most of his time in the attic broadcasting over his radio, is the professor she’s been listening to. In the show, the radio and RF technology act as a connecting force (in the literal and figurative sense) and a source of hope in a dark time. It is the radio that Marie and her uncle bond over, and eventually he tells her that he uses the device to broadcast coded messages to American forces that they then use to bomb German strongholds in the town. While Etienne was a fictional character created for the sake of the story, the use of radio transmissions by the French resistance during WWII was a very real and effective method that helped to undermine the Nazi’s efforts for occupation.
To do her part, Marie takes over Etienne’s role on the radio and begins reading sections in Braille from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, based on what her Uncle Etienne tells her. Within these selected chapters are coded messages that the Americans decipher to get bombing coordinates. It is at this point, that Marie gains true power and independence through the radio. She uses the same frequency her uncle used to broadcast his teachings as the professor and she begins each of her broadcasts with a hopeful message to her listeners despite knowing that she could be executed, and every second she remains on air places her at greater risk of detection by the enemy. In doing so, she gives her listeners the hope she feels, despite all the odds against her and her town.
When Marie comes into the fold of the rebel group in Saint-Malo, it’s not just her Uncle Etienne that’s part of the resistance, but his house keeper, Madame Manec, whom Marie becomes very close to throughout the time they’re together. To help the resistance, Madame Manec and her friends in the village adopt the stereotypical persona of a caring grandmother figure to the young Nazi soldiers in hopes of gaining small amounts of information that could help the resistance. When Marie agrees to help to rebel group in Sain-Malo, she by default joins a group of fierce patriotic women. This puts emphasis on the fact that women, who were only expected to keep up a household during this time, held a key role in the ensuing victory of Saint-Malo over the Germans.
While Marie becomes the figurehead of hope for her small town, her unassuming ally on the German side of the war, Werner Pfennig, also holds out hope because of Marie’s broadcasts. Just like the light in the darkness, strength is found in the unlikeliest of places in our two protagonists, and in this case, the radio enabled the strength they both find to do what’s right.
Saving Werner Pfennig
Werner Pfennig’s love for the radio helped him survive a Nazi training camp and the throes of war. It also saved him from the brainwashing propaganda of the German government, aimed at turning German youth into mindless killing machines for the sake of winning the war and gaining new territories.
Growing up in an orphanage, with his sister as his only surviving family, the radio became a source of comfort and consistency for Werner. Despite the laws against listening to any broadcast station that is not German and government approved, Werner’s talent with the radio allows him to hack into a foreign frequency where the professor gives his lessons every night. This becomes a large source of comfort in Werner’s life as well as consistency, when things have rarely been either of those two things in his life before.
However, his talent for the radio soon captures the attention of Nazi officials and Werner is brought unwillingly to train at the National Political Institution of Education at Schulpforta. This boarding school is where Werner hones his abilities with the radio to track frequencies and is later drafted into the military to hunt down illegal/enemy broadcasts.
Even through his academy training, which was akin to military school with a hard push on Nazi propaganda, Werner remained true to himself and was able to survive on account of his genius abilities with the radio that allowed him to graduate at the top of his class. Even during the war when he is on the front, Werner continues to listen to the professor’s broadcasts, if only for the comfort it brings him in a time of uncertainty. When Marie takes over the broadcast, he finds himself enthralled with her talks about hope and even her readings from A Thousand Leagues. Although he doesn’t know that her broadcasts are coded messages, he is drawn to Marie solely by hearing her voice through the radio and believing what she has to say about finding the light in the darkness, the good in all the bad despite how hopeless it may seem.
When Werner is eventually tasked with hunting Marie down because his superiors have figured out that she is giving American forces their coordinates, he does everything in his power to save her, betraying his home country in the process. While the professor’s lessons were a comfort and a constant thing in both Marie and Werner’s young lives, it eventually leads them together despite all odds. When they get older and the radio becomes something that gives their lives purpose and power, it subsequently leads them to work together to defeat a common enemy.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the story, we’re left with three victories thanks to the power the radio brought our protagonists. A victory for the town of Saint-Malo against the Germans, to Marie for her bravery and standing up against her enemies despite the costs, and Werner for staying true to himself and his values while also fighting for what he believes is right. Throughout the story, the radio remained the thing that not only was the conduit for hope and the light in darkness, but as something that united people from all walks of the earth.
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