The Radio

[Tuli Freeman]

In the book, radios are a symbol that often come up. When Werner first finds his radio, he uses his unusual talent to fix it up, and eventually makes a name for himself in his area, fixing radios for all sorts of people. His ability eventually got him to the school, where he gained opportunity after opportunity, which is what the radio symbolizes for him. With it, many doors open that don't for many boys. Because of his talent, he escaped the mines that swallow up lesser boys like yesterdays leftovers. 
    For Marie- Laure, the radio means something else. With the radio, her and her associates are able to broadcast information under the noses of the Germans. They help other people, even if they don't know how, and stand up against the Führer. 

[Cole Powers]

Before the story begins, the author gives a quote: "It would not have been possible for us to take power ore use it in the ways we have without the radio." -Joseph Goebbels. I think that in All The Light We Cannot See the radio represents the power of communication. Much like in The Book Thief, Doerr says that words are extremely powerful, that they have the power to do great good and great evil. Doerr shows both. The radio allowed the Reich to send propaganda to everyone who owned one. As Goebbels says, this was the only way they were able to take so much power. But communication also allows people to communicate with people from different cultures, from different countries, an act that may even be able to counteract the German's propaganda. The radio gave Werner the power to listen to a French man speak of science and curiosity even when he was isolated from this world in his mining town orphanage. The radio gave him the opportunity of listening to others outside of his community, to find a place where he fit in. With the same radio, Jutta listened to a foreign opinion of the war, a speech in which they were the monsters. It gave her the power to question the propaganda of her own country.