
Taking a look at this prompt, the first thing to note is that it is theme-based. Without further ado, let’s get into it! ‘In All the Light We Cannot See there is a fine line between civilised and uncivilised behaviour.’ Discuss. Within the THINK strategy, we have 3 steps, or ABC. If you’re unfamiliar with this strategy, you can learn about it in our How To Write A Killer Text Response study guide. Here, we’ll be breaking down an All the Light We Cannot See essay topic using LSG’s THINK and EXECUTE strategy, a technique to help you write better VCE essays. If you need a quick refresher or you’re new to studying this text, I highly recommend checking it out! We've explored themes and symbols and provided a summary of the text over on our All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr blog post. Breaking Down an All the Light We Cannot See Essay Prompt For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response.

Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer, says the Los Angeles Times, "whose sentences never fail to thrill." ( From the publisher.All the Light We Cannot See is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Natural History Museum, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks.


From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
