Doerr is careful to explain that Marie-Laure’s world is not a dark one. Though blind, she is still a creature of light. Her other senses, compensating for her blindness, explode into a whorl of colors, sounds and feelings. Her father, who is all things to her, is also all the colors, changing like a kaleidoscope to match what he is doing at the moment, such as red when he is cooking and blue when he is happily tinkering at home.