Survival “True friendship is like phosphorescence- it glows best when the world around you goes dark”-Denis Martin. The Vilkas family, including 15-year-old Lena Vilkas, her 10-year-old brother Jonas and their mother Elena, have been rounded up out of their home and charged as criminals by the NKVD, the secret police for the Soviet Union, they were taken to a train station for transporting. This is where they are all put into train cars, and this is where the fight for survival begins. Now, they all have to work together to stay alive and get through this dark time. In the book Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys, Sepetys suggests, when going through tough times it helps to have good relationships to help get through it. This is shown through life and death …show more content…
People are dying due to the inhumane conditions. They will stay on the train for nearly 8 weeks, being taken to work camps in Siberia. While on the train Lina and Jonas become friends with a boy who is Lina’s age named Andrius Arvydas, he is on the train with his mother. Andrius is extremely protective of his mother, and often helps Lina’s family with getting food and shelter. Andrius and Lina have an instant connection, though the ordeal of the camps drives them apart at times. Andrius takes Jonas under his wing, offering protection and guidance that comforts Lina and her mother. Andrius’s mother, Mrs. Arvydas does anything to try and protect him: first making sure that the NKVD believed he was mentally disabled because that is the only way they would allow him to survive, and then prostituting herself in exchange for his survival. “Because they threatened to kill me unless she slept with them. And if they get tired of her, they still might kill me. So how would you feel, Lina, if your mother felt she had to prostitute herself to save your life?” (Sepetys 159). These mothers are willing to do anything to protect their own