Alternate Protagonist

[aidanrolstad]

In the novel All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr it follows two main story lines and two minor story lines. Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig being the major story lines, Jutta Pfennig and Reinhold von Rumpel being the minor story lines. When all the story lines clash in the center of the main conflict we get to see the interactions between most of them. But this interaction brought a question into my head, could Reinhold von Rumpel be set forth as the main protagonist of the story. Sure he is a nazi and that is clearly evil, but in the novel it talks about how his main focus later in the story is to get the sea of flames. So could a story be produced with him as the struggling man who is doing anything in order to beat his cancer and continue living in hope that his daughters can keep their father? 

[Mete Bakircioglu]

I believe that the reason Doerr chose to focus on Marie-Laure and Werner is because together they form a synergy that produces an amazing climax when they finally meet. The reason behind this bond is that the two characters are vastly different, yet at the same time similar. Although Marie-Laure and Werner lived in different climates, they both experienced the same war and their greatest desires were to go back to the way things were before the war. Marie-Laure back in Paris trailing behind her father towards the museum, and Werner, lying next to his sister in the attic of Frau Elena's orphanage listening to the voice of the professor through the radio. Sergeant von Rumpel serves the story as a dying man leaping to irrational measures to save himself. His character was the reason behind the arrest of Marie-Laure's father and ultimately one of the reasons behind the collision of Marie-Laure's and Werner's story lines. These are some of the few reasons it wouldn't make much sense to develop the sergeant's character more than Doerr already has.