IndexWerner's blindnessLife is like a restless labyrinthAnother significant symbol is the labyrinth, which essentially represents the problems Marie-Laure faces, especially blindness which makes his whole life like a labyrinth. Marie-Laure listens to her logic when faced with a problem, because she has experience dealing with mazes. When she was diagnosed with “Congenital Cataract. Bilateral. Irreparable,” the “Spaces she once knew as familiar…[became] labyrinths fraught with danger” (Doerr 27). She is forced to view the objects around her differently and move around these objects using her new abilities that she develops. Her father teaches her to “walk the paths of logic. Every result has its cause and every difficult situation has its own key” (Doerr 111). to approach the unknowable with sensitivity, and her father's love gives her the power to manage blindness. However, when Marie-Laure is faced with her father's imprisonment, the love she once depended on is brought. away and she falls into a depression, where “everything in the house scares her…she is angry…[and] every second she feels as if her father is slipping further and further away” (Doerr 226). He has lost direction and no longer has the motivation to deal with his problems. It's not until he goes to see “the ocean! Right in front of her!” and “the labyrinth of Saint-Malo opened onto a sonic portal greater than anything she has ever experienced,” so Marie-Laure is able to face the labyrinth again (Doerr 231). He falls in love with the majestic ocean and discovers in this love a passion for the beauty of the outside world that he once considered too overwhelming to face. With this newfound motivation, she can emotionally process the loss of her father and choose her next steps in life with the logic she was taught. It is with this renewed love and passion that Marie-Laure learns to once again face her blindness and her problems. The symbol of the labyrinth returns in Werner's life, as Germany is described as “a country in constant expansion” with factories, businesses, and streets full of worker ants (Doerr 69). Essentially, it is broadcast as a maze. In Saint-Malo, for example, “it is whispered that the Germans have renovated two kilometers of underground corridors under the medieval walls; they built new defenses, new conduits, new escape routes, underground complexes of bewildering complexity” (Doerr 10). The Germans have turned their home into a foreign and intimidating land, a menacing labyrinth. Much of Germany's fear is due to its intimidating army, which fights in seemingly unshakable unity with the attitude that “All is glory, homeland, competition, and sacrifice” (Doerr 62). Werner is lost in all this nationalism; he is lost in the labyrinths of Germany that sings blasphemy as if it were pure truth and defines purity as a list of required genetics. Germany, which orders its soldiers: “Do not trust your minds” because they “always wander towards ambiguity, towards questions, when what you really need is certainty. Scope. Clarity” (Doerr 264). Germany perpetuates the labyrinth because, contrary to Marie-Claire's search for reason, it requires a complete disregard of thought processes instead of uncompromising patriotism. To overcome this labyrinth, Werner also finds love, both in the sea and in Marie-Claire. When Werner describes the sea, he says, “I think it's the favorite thing I've ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties” (Doerr 405). Here Doerr compares directlyWerner and Marie-Laure, because they are on two opposite paths but find the same force of nature attractive. It is dramatic irony, as the reader can see the unity of passion between the characters before the characters themselves realize their love. This dramatic irony foreshadows Werner's eventual focus on Marie-Laure as motivation to act on his inner heart of compassion. Werner describes the first time he saw Marie-Laure in the same way: “Why are Werner's hands shaking? Why can't he catch his breath?... This, he thinks, is the pure they always talked about in Schulpforta” (Doerr 413). In both cases Werner stops participating in the work he believes is truly wrong, because he has seen something he loves. He is so overcome with emotion at seeing his heart's desire, that he cannot pretend that his heart desires anything else. This is how Werner is freed from the labyrinth. In Hope of LoveElsewhere, the radio is a symbol of hope for Werner. When he listens to the radio for the first time, the world around Werner “seems the same as always… Yet now there is music. As if, in Werner's head, an infinitesimal orchestra came to life” (Doerr 33). Although Werner is stuck in an orphan's home, destined to work in the dangerous coal mine that orphaned him, the radio is a means to escape this hopeless reality and dream of a different future. Indeed, Doerr establishes Werner's morality with radio, because "Werner's favorite [radio show] is about light: eclipses and sundials, auroras and wavelengths." The radio speaker teaches: “What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum goes to zero in one direction and to infinity in the other, so in reality, children, mathematically all light is invisible” (Doerr 53). This program is metaphorical and shows the equality of all humanity in seeing the light, that technically everyone is blind because the light exists infinitely and does not exist at all. Werner's appreciation for this program reveals his moral beliefs in the value of light and the equality of all human beings. This highlights the height of corruption that occurs as this quest to escape the fate of the coal mines consumes Werner and “in his nightmares, he walks in the mine tunnels. The ceiling is smooth and black; slabs of it descend upon him as he walks” (Doerr 68-69). This fear of being trapped perverts him. Instead of hoping for love, Werner places his hopes in his future success and the possible luxuries to which his talent gives him access. Here lies the risk of hope; so that humanity can hope for a force of corruption. In this case, the radio that “ties a million ears to a single mouth” sounds “from the speakers all around the Zollverein, the staccato voice of the Reich,” which “grows like an imperturbable tree; its subjects lean towards its branches as towards the lips of God” (Doerr 63). Werner's misplaced hope is only a reflection of all of Germany, which hopes in Hitler, losing sight of morality in the pursuit of prosperity. Only later, at the Hotel delle Api, does Werner use the radio for the right reasons and finds another source in which to find hope. Werner is blocked and “the radio is hopeless. He wants to close his eyes, forget, give up… But Volkheimer wants to argue that life is worth living” (Doerr 211). Volkheimer, Werner's friend and military partner, it is love that drives Werner to finish his last act in search of hope. Because Volkheimer believes that Werner's life is worth living, Werner is given the strength to continue despite overwhelming evidence that his situation is hopeless. In this same place of blindness, Werner not only achieves enlightenment, but.