Analysis Of Between Shades Of Gray By Ruta Sepetys

“ Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.” Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, is a novel that portrays the hardships of the prisoners of war's lives. The setting for this book changes of short and some long periods of time, the weather, time, atmosphere and location all are affected during Lina and her family’s time in Soviet occupied countries.

In June 1941, Lina, her mother, and her younger brother were forced out of their home in Kaunas, Lithuania. They were taken to a train station where there were hundreds of other families being separated onto different trains. Jonas, Lina’s younger brother was forced away from Lina and their mother, she bargained the Soviet officer

On the train days were warm and the cattle car got stuffy from having lots of people crammed into one car. The night’s were cold but they had body warmth to heat themselves. The air in the train cars smelled of urine and body sweat, because they had to go to the bathroom through a hole in the floor and there was only one tiny window for fresh air to come through. When they arrive at the beet farm summer is just ending so the weather is still decently warm, but does get a little colder at night. When winter comes at the farm, the snow gets deep and there are snowstorms that trapped them in their shacks and they weren’t able to work, meaning they didn’t get any food rations that day. The days they travelled to the Arctic Circle was in the fall, the weather wasn’t cold but it was not warm either. When they got to their destination in the very north it was always winter, there were storms more frequently and the places they lived in were not very good shelters from the cold. The mood in the book is shown clearly through Lina’s thoughts and how she sees the situation. When they are shoved on a train with other people they don’t know she becomes frustrated and doesn’t understand why they are being treated like they are. The way she speaks about those that she travels with, you can tell that they are all scared to death about not knowing what is going to happen

While on the month long train ride, their bathroom consisted of a hole in the floor of the train car. What they ate on this trip was a pail of slop and a pail of water for the whole car to share and they had to go fetch it when they stopped at a train station. At the beet farm they had to work all day or they were beat or didn’t get their food ration of a piece of bread. They had to steal food from the Soviets trash cans or steal beets if you picked them during the day. Some days they got potatoes and could make soup in the huts that they lived in. They got tin scraps of wood to build a fire or they would steal would from the Soviets to keep them warm during the winter. Lots of people became sick because they didn’t get even nutrients and they were given no medicine or extra food to become healthy again. All the people were starving and being forced to work all day killed some or they were beaten so bad they could no longer work and they would starve to death with o food rations. They were not allowed showers or new clothes, so bacteria would grow everywhere making them more sick and getting lice was common and it would spread. The conditions in the Arctic Circle were much worse, the weather was always extremely cold and most didn’t have warm enough clothes so they would get frostbite and would become very sick. The houses they