All the Light We Cannot See

Etienne begs someone to help him with his niece. Even if the Germans were sympathetic, the city behind them is in flames and nothing can be done. When the fort is hit, Etienne just hunkers down until it is all over.

Marie-Laure considers just handing the jewel over to the German and hoping that he will spare her, but she resolves to finish reading the book before deciding what to do next.

Von Rumpel berates himself. He was so certain that the stone was here in Saint-Malo. Too late, he realizes that any one of the previous people he spoke with could have been hiding another gem. A German soldier approaches the house, and Von Rumpel tells him that he’s nearly finished and will leave soon. The German forces are falling back from the city, on the run.

The girl reads the end of the novel and the broadcast ends. Werner waits for his own end in the dark. Volkheimer, sitting nearby, is silent and unmoving.

Marie-Laure has survived in her uncle’s attic for five days. She resolves to play music on the gramophone, loudly, and waits for the German to come for her with her knife in her fist. She turns on the gramophone and broadcasts the music.

Volkheimer is still wearing the headphones when the music comes on. He rouses Werner, who hears the familiar strains of “Claire de Lune.” Inspired by the music, Volkheimer builds a barricade around Werner and throws a grenade at the stairwell.

Von Rumpel dreams of his daughter Veronika. As he wakes up, the music of his dream fades, and is replaced by a man’s voice speaking, in French, about coal.

When Werner and Volkheimer recover from the concussion of the grenade, they look up and see the night sky. They climb out of the basement. Volkheimer gives Werner a gun and tells him to go, while Volkheimer looks for food. Werner hopes that his Nazi training does not fail him as he tries to rescue the girl.

Von Rumpel leans into the massive wardrobe on the sixth floor; he is disoriented from the morphine and from drinking wine. He sees trails in the dust and hears the recording end above him. He is startled when he hears a bell ring and someone enters the house. He falls, dropping his candle, which rolls toward the curtains.

Werner makes his way up the stairs, through the ruined house to the sixth floor. He turns into room on the right, and finds a bedroom lined with shells, containing a model of the city. He lifts the bucket of water and drinks from it. As he does so, von Rumpel enters the room, pistol in hand. Von Rumpel assumes that Werner is there to steal the diamond, and he aims his pistol at Werner. Werner lunges for Volkheimer’s rifle.

As Marie-Laure hears a gunshot followed by the hissing of the curtain fire being put out, Etienne LeBlanc, in a prison cell at Fort National, thinks of taking Marie-Laure on a trip to the Amazon when the war is over. Von Rumpel’s wife thinks about a good-looking neighbor. All people are joined as one in this snapshot of a singular moment in von Rumpel’s, Werner’s, and Marie-Laure’s lives. Werner speaks to the back of the wardrobe in French, “Are you there?”

Marie steps out into her grandfather’s room, and Werner takes her hand to help her.

As the shelling resumes, Werner tells Marie-Laure that there will a cease-fire at noon the next day, and he will help her get out of the city. Werner memorizes Marie-Laure’s gestures and the way she looks. They talk: Spotting the radio transmitter, Werner mentions the professor’s radio broadcasts, and Marie-Laure tells him that this professor is her grandfather. They share Marie-Laure’s last can of food: by some miracle, it is Marie-Laure’s favorite, Madame Manec’s peaches.

Werner and Marie-Laure continue to talk; she shows him the transmitter and they discuss the ending of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Marie-Laure does not believe that Captain Nemo survived. Werner sees a copy of Audubon’s Birds of America and asks Marie-Laure if he can have a page of it. She says he can. Werner imagines spending more time with Marie-Laure; in a few years Germany and France will be different. Marie-Laure asks Werner if he knows why the other German, von Rumpel, was there. Werner wonders if it was to do with the transmitter.

They fall asleep.

Werner escorts Marie-Laure through the streets of Saint-Malo, with her cane and a white pillowcase on display to show her non-combatant status. She takes him to the grotto and puts a little house into the water. She asks Werner to be sure that the little house is in the ocean. He tells her it is. As they part, Marie-Laure asks how they will find each other again. Werner doesn’t know. She presses something into his palm and closes his fingers over it. They say goodbye.

He opens his hand once she has left: a little iron key lies in his palm.

Madame Ruelle finds Marie-Laure in a requisitioned school and they become inseparable. Madame Ruelle locates Etienne the next day, when the prisoners from Fort National are freed. The siege of Saint-Malo officially ends on August 25.

Etienne and Marie-Laure decide to go to Paris.

Werner is captured by the French resistance and taken to a holding camp for prisoners. Wearing Marie-Laure’s great-uncle’s old clothing over his uniform, Werner marches with other prisoners to Dinan. He cannot keep any food down; he grows weaker.

On September 1, Werner is too weak to get up in the morning. He is eventually taken to a field hospital where they give him IV fluids and try to feed him gruel. He remains there for a week, lingering in a feverish state, constantly playing with a little wooden puzzle house.

Eventually, while holding an imaginary conversation with Jutta, Werner wanders into the moonlight at the edge of the field where the sick tent is located and is blown up by a German land mine.