He never loses hope in the stone, even as he is so close to death, he still thinks there is a possibility of him finding the stone and living forever.īoth Werner and Marie-Laure are blind, Werner figuratively and Marie-Laure literally. He continues hunting for the stone even when his cancer has progressed so far he can barely walk. Though Von Rumpel is diagnosed with cancer, and given only a few months to live, he never doubts that will cure him. This diamond, which, according to legend, gives the person who possesses it eternal life, but causes harm to the people around the possessor, represents hope. Both these women - the seven year old and the Jewess - were victims of the cruelty of the Germans during this time. She haunts Werner after her murder, drawing out his guilt, and later transforms into the Jewess from Frederick’s building. She is introduced to the reader playing on a swing set with her mother watching nearby, an action that characterizes her as young and harmless, making her death seem even more inhumane to the reader. Killed in error by a German soldier, the girl with the maroon velvet cloak symbolizes the victims of the Germans during the war. Throughout the war, the book remains a constant, offering comfort to Marie-Laure and keeping her mind off the atrocities happening all around her. She continues reading it when her father is put in a German prison camp and she is left with her uncle, and later, when her uncle is taken away and she is left alone in the house to fend for herself. At the very hardest time, she reads the book into her uncle’s radio to offer comfort for all those experiencing the hardships of war like her.

She starts reading it when she is living a normal life with her father, before the war has even started. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Īs Marie-Laure reads this book through good and bad times, it represents people’s efforts to maintain normality, even in a time of war.

The radio also symbolizes hope for Werner, as it is what helped him evade going into the mines. Though France is occupied by the Germans, the illegal radios of the French people show that they will not give up and will do everything in their power to get back their homes.

Though the Germans have outlawed radios, many people keep them to communicate with their allies in hopes of defeating the Nazis. Illegal radios also represent the resistance to oppression. The radio plays a big part in both the lives of Werner and Marie-Laure, as this is the way they meet each other, symbolizing the connection of people all over the world.

2 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

The light which we cannot see