This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prelude-Chapter 1

Part 1, Chapters 2-17

Part 2, Chapters 18-42

Part 3, Chapters 43-60

Part 4, Chapter 61-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

The Sinti Magic Paper

Before Charlie is taken to the concentration camp, Monsieur S. hides her in a secret location along with a Sinti family. The Sinti are a Romani subgroup, most of whom live in Germany and Central Europe. Along with the Jews, the Sinti were targeted by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. The mother of the Sinti family gives Charlie slips of “magic paper”; Charlie explains, “[I]f I write a person’s name on the slip, I will appear to that person. Like a ghost” (167). These slips of magic paper are a motif that helps to illustrate the bond that endures between Alex and Charlie across time and space, just like their letters over the years. In practical terms, it also allows Fukuda to convey crucial information about Charlie that Alex would otherwise have no way of knowing, and thus the Sinti magic paper, while innately inexplicable, serves as a narrative vehicle that fuels Alex’s inner motivation to survive the horrors of war and find his beloved friend. Without this strategic device, Alex’s story and Charlie’s would remain isolated and disconnected from each other from the moment it becomes impossible for them to send and receive letters.

Turtle Boy with His Head in the Clouds

Alex often refers to himself as a “turtle boy with his head in the clouds.” Unlike Frank, who is outgoing and popular, and Charlie, whose fiery personality spurs her to rebel, Alex spends his childhood withdrawn and aloof, like a turtle hiding in its shell. Charlie consistently encourages him to come out of his shell and meet people. In a letter from August 11, 1938, she entreats him, “You cannot hide yourself away all the time. You cannot be like a turtle retreating deep into his shell, away from everyone, away from the world” (19). Despite this warning, Alex continually thinks of himself in these terms, using the “turtle boy” motif to disparage himself. It is not until he joins the army and experiences combat and loss that he is able to come out of his shell. When Frank finally writes to Alex while Alex is away at war, the reversal of their roles is evident, and Frank tells him, “Yes, my weird, strange little brother, you’ve always had your head in the clouds. But that ain’t so bad a place to be when your heart’s in the right place” (334).

Paper Lanterns

In one of Alex’s letters, he tells Charlie how to build traditional Japanese floating paper lanterns. When Charlie can no longer stand her confinement in hiding at Shäfer’s factory, she leaves at her own peril to roam around Paris and constructs a paper lantern that she floats down the Seine. In her letter describing the event, she writes, “And even now, as I close my eyes, I think of it floating across the Atlantic Ocean […] Defying the wind and sea, defying the world. And somehow finding its way to the shores of America, to, dear Alex, you” (169). This lantern becomes one expression of the “light” between them and represents the hope that both Alex and Charlie hold onto in their darkest moments, knowing that there is someone out there who loves them and is waiting for them. Alex uses the lantern to memorialize Charlie years after the main events of the novel. He sees the lantern that he sends out to sea in her memory as a “pulsing light between two worlds,” now a symbolic link between life and death, rather than between France and America (374). It is Alex’s way of maintaining their connection, even though Charlie remains infinitely distant.