The Simultaneity of Instants: On page 466
This passage, The Simultaneity of Instants, is the moment before the face to face meeting of Werner and Marie-Laure. It is the climax of the story as the plotlines converge and Saint-Malo is about to be overrun by invaders.
It begins with short clipped sentences describing the noise of the deadly confrontation of Von Rumpel and Werner. Door makes an allusion to Krakatoa. The volcano, Krakatos, is situated in the strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra. On August 26 and 27 of 1883 the Volcano experiences such culminating eruptions that most of the island was obliterated along with most of the surrounding archipelago. A total of 36,417 lives were lost in the eruption and resulting tsunamis. The following year the average Northern Hemisphere summer temperature dropped by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. And the ash darkened the sky worldwide of years. (Some say the vivid sunset behind Edvard Munch’s The Scream was caused by the explosion) It produced the loudest sound ever recorded in modern history with it being heard 3,000 miles away. For Marie-Laure such a sound compounds the terror of the moment.…show more content… It moves from the characters we have been introduced to and the others equally important to their own people. The daily routine of the colonel dressing and the routine of the ‘innocent’ wife and daughter of the antagonist of the story Von Rumpel. Dur takes us from the lowly invading nineteen year-old to the warm milk (but never boiled) of the Führer. It is here that Etienne decides to take back his own life and the remain days he has with his only living relative. Though fragmented this paragraph reminds the rider that though the protagonist has reached a life altering point life goes one for the billion other people in the world. It is a quick lesson to the reader to not become entrapped in a single moment and ignore the rest of the