There is also another depiction of her being consumed by fear in another occasion. This passage below shows the narration.
Marie-Laure yanks the hem of his coat.
“Papa, please.” In her coat against the black trees, her face looks paler and more frightened than he has ever
seen it. Has he ever asked so much of her? “A house has burned, Marie.
People are stealing things.” “What house?” “The house we have come so far to reach.” Over her head, he can see the smoldering remains of door frames
glow and fade with the passage of the breeze. A hole in the roof frames the darkening sky. Doerr, 2014: 108
Marie is frightened because her father brings her into an unknown place. Moreover, the place has been burned by somebody. Marie Laure and her father
should find another shelter to keep them away from war and secure the treasure of France
. On the depiction above, Marie Laure’s fear is depicted explicitly by describing her growing paler face. Furthermore, it is even emphasized by stating that
her father never saw her in that expression. Marie Laure is depicted as having fear from the threat of her surroundings. She is also depicted as having fear to unknown
people or strangers who steals things in the house which is supposed to be safe. She is overwhelmed by the accumulated fear resulted from the chaotic world she is in.
Another depiction o f Marie Laure’s fear again can also be found at the time
when she is alone in her great uncle’s house and there is somebody who rings the
bell. Below passage is the narration whic h highlights Marie Laure’s fear in that
moment.
The distress is so acute, it is almost unbearable. She tries to settle her mind, tries to focus on an image of a candle flame burning at the center of
her rib cage, a snail drawn up into the coils of its shell, but her heart bangs
in her chest and pulses of fear cycle up her spine, and she is suddenly uncertain whether a sighted person in the foyer can look up the curves of the
stairwell and see all the way to the third floor. She remembers her great- uncle said that they would need to watch out for looters, and the air stirs
with phantom blurs and rustles, and Marie- Laure imagines charging past the bathroom into the cobwebbed sewing room here on the third floor and hurling
herself out the window. Doerr, 2014: 303
Marie Laure is found so speculative to the person who enters the house. She is depicted as having faster heart beats because of the acute distress she feels. Actually,
she does not know who it is. However, she is so scared that it is depicted as if the fear cycles up her spine. The reason that the person simply enters the house without
saying a hello pumps Marie Laure to speculate that this person must be a bad person. This person is imagined by Marie Laure as probably looters or else who have a bad
intention to the residents of the house. This narration shows the fear of threat triggered by strangers which is also previously narrated in different occasions. Marie
Laure is depicted as having these qualities of fears and these fears continually haunt her.
3. Irrationality and Emotional Instability
Rationality and emotional control are generally regarded as endorsed characteristics for people. Both are important elements for every person to socialize
to one another. They make people staying aware upon their thoughts and actions. Rationality and emotional control are also essential parts of
an individual’s intelligentsia. In practice, sometimes both of them are interrelated. When a person is
rational, it is likely he or she will be emotionally stable because of his or her ability to control his or her own emotion. Meanwhile, when a person is emotionally stable, he
or she will be likely to be able to remain rational. In a patriarchal society, these upper hand traits are commonly associated with traits owned by males and are considered as
parts of their gender. Females are seen as rarely or incapable of having any of those qualities.
Rationality, in its essence, is broadly defined as a person ’s capacity to argue
over something Heikes, 2010: 5. This idea does not mean every person can simply argue without any basis of consideration or justification. Logic is commonly the
practical guidance for a person to be able to argue rationally. Meanwhile, emotional stability may only exist if a person has any adequate capacity to control his or her
mind through reasoning. Emotion is link ed with human’s feelings. It may change
because of internal and external factors and even prone to change with or without people’s consents. However, it does not mean emotion is a separate entity that is able
to run by itself. Emotion is integrated to oneself and it can be controlled by one’s
cognitive ability. Cognitive ability is something that can be nurtured. Therefore, if Prinz 2004: 11 states that emotion can be sensed and purposely addressed because it
is part of the cognitive states of human body, this claim is not an exaggerative idea. In Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, the female figures are narrated as
human beings which are prone to irrationality and instability of emotion. Females are regarded as incapable to, or rarely, have rationality and stability of emotion. This
narrative of inferiority continually shapes the image of women in the novel. The
women in the novel are constructed as adopting this toxic narrative. This construction of women consequently affects their gender. Bad traits are labeled to them as the
effects of their gender construction. These misleading narrations show the subordination of females in the story.
To start the analysis of the findings under this heading, the narration of irrationality and emotional instability comes from the main character of the novel,
Marie Laure, will be discussed beforehand. As the main character, at the very beginning of her early life as a blind girl, she is depicted as emotionally unstable and
vulnerable. She is very dependent to people who surround her. However, this dependency never fades till she has grown up and this situation has led to numerous
problems. This narration below shows Marie Laure’s attachment to her father as well as her persistent irrationality.
A woman prays in a Norman accent; someone shares pâté; everything smells of rain. No Stukas swoop over them, machine guns blazing. No one in the
truck has even seen a German. For half the morning, Marie-Laure tries to convince herself that the previous days have been some elaborate test
concocted by her father, that the truck is moving not away from Paris but
toward it, that tonight they‟ll return home. Doerr, 2014: 117 This quotation happens when Marie Laure and her father should flee from
Paris to another place to get a shelter and secure themselves. They go to Evreux as ordered by the Director of the Museum of Natural History. Daniel Le Blanc Marie
Laure’s father is entrusted one of the possibly real treasures of the museum. This treasure is a pear shaped diamond worth millions of money called Sea of Flames.
Daniel is ordered to bring the gem and gives it to Monsieur Giannott, but the house
they aimed to is burnt and Monsieur Giannott as the owner of the place is reported to flee to London. Marie Laure, under this chaotic world, tries to convince herself that
what has happened to her is merely a test made by her father for her. She tries to calm herself and keep thinking that everything is not real. She is depicted as unable to
accept the reality she is in. This narration shows her irrationality through her denial over the reality. She keeps telling herself that the truck which carries them is not
moving away from their home in Paris while factually it goes away from Paris. Meanwhile, in the other parts of the story which is specifically made to tell
the journey of Werner Pfennig, the women are also narrated as irrational and emotionally unstable beings. This letter from Jutta Wer
ner’s sister below is one of the examples that indirectly lowers the female figures through the portrayal of their
irrationality. Theres a new radio transmitter in Brandenburg called the Deutschlandsender
3 my brother says it is three hundred thirty-something meters tall the second- tallest man-made construction in the world. It pushes basically everything
else off the dial. Old Frau Stresemann, shes one of our neighbors, she says she can hear
Deutschlandsender broadcasts in her tooth fillings. My brother said
its possible if you have an antenna and a rectifier and something
to serve as a speaker. He said you can use a section of wire fence to pick up radio signals, so maybe the silver in tooth can too. I like to think about that.
Dont you Professor?Songs in your teeth? Doerr, 2014: 67
It is told in the passage that Jutta is retelling how Old Frau Stresemann can hear the radio broadcast in her tooth fillings. It seems funny at the first glance.
However, beyond of this funny story, it entails a deeper meaning that probably Frau Stresemann is actually an irrational old lady who speaks absurd things. It can also be
