As a bildungsroman and war theme novel, there are implications in every letter, especially the word “light” in both book title and the text。 The imagery of light always has many different metaphoric or symbolic meanings in texts。 Therefore, the imagery of light in the novel will be analysed with Archetypal Theory and uncover the implication of author’s idea of good and evil, cruelty and humanity, and the relationship between light and characters’ psychology, which will help to have a deeper understanding of the novel。 Moreover, since the research of this novel is limited at home, this paper might make up for the deficiency。

1。3 Research Questions 论文网

This paper intends to undertake the further research on the following two aspects。 First one is to describe the archetypal light phenomenon in the book All the Light We Cannot See。 The second one is to try to discuss and explain the power and the influence of light architypes on characters。

2。 Literature Review 

2。1 Previous researches of All the Light We Cannot See 

2。1。1 Previous researches of All the Light We Cannot See abroad

Since the novel has only been published for two years, only a few of critics have done researches on the novel, studies of the novel abroad are limited。 Here will introduce four pieces。 As a popular novel, there are always analysis and comments from newspapers for it。 Two writers respectively from The New York Times and The Guardians analysed the content of the book roughly。 Justin Cartwright (2014) from New York Times makes compliment on the book for its story plots and writing skills。 But he expresses his idea of the book’s weakness that it has a lot of aspects of genre fictions。 And there are some small mistakes。 For example, Niels Bohr was not a German。 Janet Maslin (2015) praises Doerr’s acutely sensory style and nuanced approach which make all characters vividly。 He also talked about motifs, such as light, self-protection and lies。 On the whole, both of these two writers’ expressions were the approval of this novel。

As for the theme of the novel, the author of From Literature to Medicine, discussed the question of “good” and “evil” in this novel, and the rich inner lives of people, holding the view that although Werner chooses Nazism and Marie-Laure chooses the Resistance, author’s subtle description of their inner lives keep readers from taking them simply as an evil Nazi and a noble hero。 Maybe some forms of heroism are actually about enduring the circumstances of ordinary life。 In the end, this paper calls medical students and practitioners apply this kind of concept in medical education, meaning that every patient’s life is abundant。 Although medical archetypes can be useful sometimes, it can also be dangerous to depend on preliminary assumptions when only a little of a patient’s story is available (Daniel Marchalik, Ann Jureci, 2016)。 

In the perspective of characters’ behaviour, Pradeep Menon (2016) discusses Werner’s participation in Nazi, his psychology and function of his sister and other people in the story。 Menon thought the reason why Werner join in Nazi that just for people he loves living better and creating a harbour for them。 This topic is similar to the last one, which could inspire people’s thought of the definition of good and evil。 

In conclusion, these pieces of papers abroad approach to this novel from different angles and express authors’ understandings about the book。 All these contributed to the study of the novel。

2。1。2 Previous researches of All the Light We Cannot See at home 文献综述

There are some theses at home that analysing the novel from some different perspectives, such as characters, images and the themes of salvation, psychology, semiology, humanity, etc。 The first research is about the theme。 In the book, except two major human characters – boy Werner and girl Marie-Laure, the inanimate object – wireless radio plays an important role too。 And radio wave also is the main inducement that attracted Doerr’s attention and encouraged him to write this novel。 Therefore, when Li Dai (2015) analysed the theme of the novel, he points out the great power of wireless radio。 It is the radio that connects all clues of the story, especially the encounter of the boy and the girl。 He believed it was the development of technology that changed the society。 Nowadays, the development of information processing technology might lead to great changes of the society。