In 1939, modern world’s largest conflagration started, when Germany invaded Poland and ended with Japan’s surrender in 1945. When Adolf Hitler, despite signing nonaggression pact with soviet forces, attacked Poland, Britain and France countered the act by declaring war on Germany. The events that followed were fall of Norway and Denmark at the hands of Nazi forces and invasion of lower countries. The war deteriorated when Nazi forces attacked Soviet Union, violating the non-aggression pact. One of the key conflicts that caused this war was eradication of Jewish race from Germany. With this hatred for Jewish nation in mind, Hitler established concentration camps at various places including Poland and as a result of inhumane living …show more content…
It is based upon the story of Marie Laure Le Blanc and Werner Pfennig. Marie’s father worked as a locksmith in a museum in Paris. When Marie lost her eyesight at the age of 6, he builds a wooden model of her surrounding areas so that she has no difficulty to navigate the places. Werner was and 8 years old orphan boy who lived with his sister Jutta in Zollverein. When war broke out in 1939, Marie moved to Saint Malo with her father and Werner was enrolled in Nazi army. Marie Laure leaves Paris with her father who had to deliver a stone named as sea of flames to a friend of museum. Werner faces so many difficulties in Sculpforta as his friends were brutalized by the soldiers. When the novel ends, Werner dies of dementia and Marie loses her father. Marie starts working in the museum where her father used to work before the outbreak of war. Novel is all about the struggle of Marie as a blind girl and Werner as an orphan boy, with war in the …show more content…
He praises Doerr’s novels by calling them “relativising” and aesthetic at the same time. Since relativizer is the one who compares two or more things of the same category, so Doerr as a relativizer has compared the inhumane atrocities of World War 2 and the German people and their determination towards the eradication of Jewish race out of the country. But, the mechanization and modernization has enhanced the aesthetic sense in people. That is explained by Doerr as he has shown the fascination of the young boys for shinning belts, boats and Nazi soldiers’ uniform. However, Green has criticized this aesthetic approach of Doerr by saying that such fascination to the symbols of war blurs the boundaries between past and present. War was horrible and catastrophic but such symbols dim the effect of horror and terror of war. He explains that the obvious problems that were caused by war and bloodshed were portrayed to be driven because of mysterious and ambiguous reasons. He observes that the novel is full of sadistic and sexual images and it appears to be a horror film because Marie spent days in the attic of the house and visualized her rape by the soldiers. Children in the orphanage where Werner lived were tied to a stake and frozen to death. These elements are all related to the frustration of those orphans, war goes to the background. Sea of flames, an evil