Appreciating What we Cannot See

Ten years ago I read the book “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doer. I've read the book several times, and each time I fall more in love with it. Nothing has managed to take its place as #1 on my personal bookshelf. But one thing rendered my reading of it incomplete. The main character, a young French girl growing up during WWII receives two precious braille books as gifts: parts one and two of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Now that I have finally read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, I can write this brief reflection on both books together.

Marie-Laure is blind, but through the use of braille, she becomes a passenger on Captain Nemo's Nautilus. It is her personal escape from a violent and confusing world. She sits next to M. Arronax, Conseil, and Ned Land as the side panels open and the marine world is just on the other side of the glass.

Brilliantly colored aquatic life, phosphorescent animalculæ, untouched coral reefs, and prismatic icebergs that sparkle so radiantly that we wonder if human eyes were never meant to lay eyes on such beauty. Captain Nemo's vessel journeys to all the places man has never been, and he brings his passengers to see these hidden wonders that exist in profound beauty and mystery without our ever knowing it.

Marie-Laure has an uncle who broadcasts science lessons over the radio. He uses the unseen electromagnetic spectrum waves to spread knowledge of the unseen wonders of the world to children all over Europe. But war disrupts childhood rapture with the unseen wonders of the world. War takes these children and makes them into soldiers where science is perverted into the art of killing. No wonder Captain Nemo seeks sanctuary beneath the waves, far away from the violence, greed, and evils of humanity.

But all is not lost. In the pages of All the Light We Cannot See, there are characters who sacrifice themselves for others, who show kindness and mercy. In the darkness of a world brutalized by war, there are little lights of goodness glimmering. That's all we are ever offered in life, and it is enough to give us hope. If we can see it.