“In his hand, the stone is about the size of a chestnut. Even at this late hour, in the quarter-light, it glows a majestic blue. Strangely cold” (Ch 31)
The Sea of Flames plays an important role in the novel, for its value as a gem as well as its value as an object that holds the power of eternal life. The imagery surrounding the Sea of Flames endows it with a magical element: it usually glows, changes color, and has unexpected weight or temperature, thus emphasizing its mysterious power.
“And as night falls, Werner pulls little Jutta wordlessly back through the close-set neighborhoods of Zollverein, two snowy-haired children in a bottomland of soot” (Ch 10)
Werner and Jutta’s white hair is juxtaposed with the dark imagery of the depressing coal-mining town where they live. Werner and Jutta, in their adventures and devotion to each other, seem to embody the color of their hair: their whiteness makes them good and pure. Later, Jutta embodies this in her moral and ethical opposition to what Germany is doing; on the opposite side, Werner embodies this in his purity of hair and skin, which is the image of what Nazi Germany would like to look like.
“Color—that’s another thing people don’t expect. In her imagination, in her dreams, everything has color" (Ch 17); “That little attic bursting with bursting with magenta and aquamarine and gold for five minutes, and then the radio switches off, and the gray rushes back in, and her uncle stumps back down the stairs” (Ch 113)
Although Marie-Laure is blind, she feels color in the objects, places, and people around her. Thus, her world is not at all dark, but rather full of the colors she dreams and imagines. However, near the end of the war, as the mood in Saint-Malo darkens Marie-Laure feels only gray, the only thing lighting up Marie-Laure’s world is hearing her great-uncle's resistance broadcasts with their music.
“It sucks and booms and splashes and rumbles; it shifts and dilates and falls over itself; the labyrinth of Saint-Malo has opened onto a portal of sound larger than anything she has ever experienced” (Ch 71); “It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coin” (Ch 132, Letter from Werner to Jutta)
The ocean is Marie-Laure and Werner’s favorite thing; both of them find comfort and pleasure in the sensory delights it provides. In Marie-Laure’s first trip to the ocean, she is impressed by the vastness of its sound and size, and by the creatures and objects she finds in the sand. It helps to heal her from the heartache of losing her father. For Werner, the ocean reminds him how to feel: he is impressed by the amount of colors it contains, how they change, and how it seems to him that it could contain anything anyone could ever feel.
