All the Light We Cannot See: Metaphors 5 key examples

In Section Zero, Doerr introduces readers to Werner Pfennig, a young soldier in the German military forced to fight for the Nazi regime. Readers meet Werner in media res, in the midst of battle and cannon fire. Doerr describes one particular cannon from the perspective of Werner's fellow soldiers, using both simile and metaphor to accurately portray their attitude towards the weapon:

Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrels, lubricated her wheels; they’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings. The royal acht acht, a deathly monarch meant to protect them all.

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In Section Zero, Doerr describes the devastation of Saint Malo, using imagery and metaphor to paint a vivid picture of the destruction:

In stormy light, its granite glows blue. At the highest tides, the sea creeps into basements at the
very center of town. At the lowest tides, the barnacled ribs of a thousand shipwrecks stick out
above the sea.

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In Section One, Marie-Laure tragically loses her vision. Her father, Daniel, does everything he can to accommodate his daughter's emergent needs, including bringing her to work with him at the museum. While Daniel works, Marie-Laure observes the work of scientists and staff, honing her other senses on the museum's unique natural specimens. Doerr uses both imagery and metaphor to describe one such specimen, a shell:

The murex Dr. Geffard keeps on his desk can entertain her for a half hour, the hollow spines, the ridged whorls, the deep entrance; it’s a forest of spikes and caves and textures; it’s a kingdom.

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Towards the end of Section One, Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris as Nazi planes drop bombs on the city and its escaping citizenry. This experience is an out-of-body one for both father and daughter, who struggle to comprehend the enormity of the change wrought in their lives. As ever, Doerr's characters contend with their traumatic reality through imagery and imagination. Marie-Laure's father, Daniel LeBlanc, processes the bombing through metaphor:

In the lurid, flickering light, he sees that the airplane was not alone, that the sky teems with them, a dozen swooping back and forth, racing in all directions, and in a moment of disorientation, he feels that he’s looking not up but down, as though a spotlight has been shined into a wedge of bloodshot water, and the sky has become the sea, and the airplanes are hungry fish, harrying their prey in the dark.

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In the following passage from Section 5, Werner grapples with his separation from Jutta during his time serving in the German military. He views his connection to her as a weakness, in large part as a consequence of social and institutional pressure from his mentors and peers in the German military. Werner is conditioned to view his sister this way by circumstance, a reality Doerr unpacks through metaphor:

Though in Werner’s weaker moments, he resents those same qualities in his sister. Perhaps she’s the impurity in him, the static in his signal that the bullies can sense. Perhaps she’s the only thing keeping him from surrendering totally.

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