All the Light We Cannot See: Parts Seven–Nine

by Anthony Doerr
Marie-Laure is a blind French girl who flees the Nazi occupation of Paris. Werner Pfennig is a young orphan living in a German mining town. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, their lives intertwine in unexpected ways as they try to survive the havoc of war.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Parts Zero–Two, Parts Three–Four, Parts Five–Six, Parts Seven–Nine, Parts Ten–Thirteen
15 words 391 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. induction
    a formal entry into an organization or position or office
    No trumpets, no ceremony. This is Werner’s induction into the Wehrmacht.
  2. permeate
    spread or diffuse through
    The sound permeates the walls, the floor, Marie-Laure’s chest.
  3. rhapsodize
    say with great enthusiasm
    He longs to sit on the benches in Children's House again, to hear Frau Elena’s songs, to feel the heat pumping off the potbelly stove and the high voice of Siegfried Fischer rhapsodizing about U-boats and fighter planes, to see Jutta drawing at the far end of the table, sketching out the thousand windows of her imaginary city.
  4. taciturn
    habitually reserved and uncommunicative
    The engineer is a taciturn, pungent man named Walter Bernd whose pupils are misaligned.
  5. hubris
    overbearing pride or presumption
    Everybody, he is learning, likes to hear themselves talk. Hubris, like the oldest stories.
  6. internecine
    characterized by bloodshed and carnage for both sides
    And when April finally comes, reeking of sawdust and corpses, the canyon walls of snow give way while the ice on the roads remains stubbornly fixed, a luminous, internecine network of invasion: a record of the crucifixion of Russia.
  7. missive
    a written message addressed to a person or organization
    If secret messages lurk inside these missives—if Monsieur Fayou had a heart attack and passed gently away means Blow up the switching yard at Rennes—Etienne cannot say.
  8. nexus
    the means of connection between things linked in series
    He never leaves his house, sees no one save Marie-Laure, and yet somehow he has found himself at the nexus of a web of information.
  9. ineffectual
    lacking in power or forcefulness
    But he sees firsthand how they can be so loosely allied as to be basically ineffectual—they are wretched and filthy; they live in holes.
  10. sycophantic
    attempting to win favor by flattery
    Anyone who is not a German wants the Germans dead, even the most sycophantic of them.
  11. parapet
    fortification consisting of a low wall
    It sails over the city walls and bursts against the northern parapet of Fort National, where three hundred and eighty Frenchmen are being held against their will with minimal cover.
  12. upbraid
    express criticism towards
    He has been gone too long. He will be upbraided.
  13. mottled
    having spots or patches of color
    Her stockings have runs in them and her shoes are too large and the woolen panels of her dress are mottled with stains.
  14. sallow
    unhealthy looking
    On a bench sits a goitrous and sallow German sergeant major with shadows carved under his eyes.
  15. mercenary
    a person hired to fight for another country than their own
    She could have stepped in front of a truck, drowned in a puddle, been seized by a mercenary with foulness on his mind.
Created on Mon Jun 15 19:40:44 EDT 2015 (updated Fri Jul 11 21:11:53 EDT 2025)

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