Topic > All the Light We Cannot See: Loss of Childhood Innocence Due to Traumatizing Events

Childhood innocence is precious and important to children everywhere, which is why it should never be taken away. Everyone is born innocent, part of life's journey is to develop and gain experience. Unfortunately, some children quickly gain traumatic life experiences and lose their innocence in ways no one should. The novel All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr follows the lives of three innocent children; Werner Pfennig, Jutta Pfennig and Marie-Laure LeBlanc and their individual journeys through the Second World War. Over the course of the novel, each child encounters traumatic events that give them brutal life experience. Doerr explores the loss of childhood innocence and the impact of traumatic life experience through three children, who experience brainwashing, hard manual labor and the struggle for freedom. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayOne of the cruelest ways children lose their innocence is when corrupt governments brainwash them into becoming child soldiers. Werner Pfennig loses his childhood innocence and gains traumatic life experience when he is brainwashed into becoming a child soldier in a Nazi training school. Orphaned, Werner grows up with his little sister Jutta, near a large mining complex in Germany. Werner is an innocent child who constantly bothers the director of the orphanage “with some unanswered question” demonstrating his innocent curiosity to learn more about the world (Doerr 25). When Werner is fourteen he is accepted into the "National Political Institute of Education #6 at Schulpforta", a school that is supposed to teach teenagers to become brutal Nazis. At school, Werner and other students are traumatized when the school commandant instills Nazi propaganda in the students. During meals the commander shouts phrases like: “Homesick? We don't have to worry about our homes. In the end we all return home to the Führer. What other house matters?”. The commander also forces all students to: “immerse a captured prisoner with a bucket of water” to assert dominance over the Nazis' weak enemies. While attending Schulpforta, Werner and hundreds of other boys are brainwashed into becoming child soldiers and committing terrible atrocities. Unfortunately, this is also a problem in real life, when governmental and non-governmental conflict forces recruit thousands of child soldiers, brainwash them and take away their innocence by turning them into killing machines. Then, Werner loses his childhood innocence by attending Nazi school and is struck by a traumatic experience. No child should suffer due to manual labor, children must be free to freely explore the world, not work in factories or on the streets. Jutta Pfennig loses her innocence when she has to leave her home to work in a factory and has a traumatic experience clearing rubble from the streets. When Jutta is only fifteen years old she is “transported from Essen to Berlin to work in a machine parts factory,” where she and other women and children dismantle old machines. After the closure of the factory, Jutta and the other orphans of the Children's Home are hired by a civil company to: "clean the streets after the bombings". Jutta suffers from hard and annoying manual labor, work that no child should have to do. Like Werner, Jutta loses her childhood innocence and gains harsh life experience., 2014.