How Does Ruta Sephetys Use Flashback In Between Shades Of Gray

1,053,829 people died in the Soviet gulags. In the novel Between Shades of Gray, readers see Lina get taken from her home in Lithuania to go to a Soviet gulag camp in Russia with her brother and mother. In her travels, she makes new friends and new enemies. Ruta Sepetys uses Symbolism, Flashbacks, and Unique structure. The author uses many ways to make her book different and helpful to the reader the most common one is flashbacks. “‘I don’t deserve anything. You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.’” Right before this flashback on page 9, is when Lina, her mother, and brother were being taken by Soviets. In this flashback, she is talking to her father after she is giving a loaf of bread for free.

“Something rolled across the grass and hit my leg. It was the stone with sparkles he had found that day when he jumped off the train. ‘The crown jewel from the train car princess,’ I whispered, Smiling. He nodded with a laugh. I picked it up to roll back to him. ‘No you keep it’ said Andrius.” This is the first time we see the stone being used as a symbol on page 94. Right now in the text, it symbolizes the beginning of their friendship. This is important because readers get something to root for in terms of something outside the main conflict. “The stone Andrius had slipped it into my pockets. I stood up to let him know I had found it. He was gone.” In this piece of evidence on page 248, Lina is leaving Andrius even though she does not want to so Andrius Slips her the stone as a way of remembering him. She Holds onto the stone for the rest of the story using it to keep herself motivated. This is important so that the readers also have some hope to hold onto that readers will get to see him again as well even though readers never get to hear of him again till the very end readers have a miniscule conflict to focus on when the main conflict is not in the forefront of Lina’s

On these pages, these maps ( Above) are showing the great amount of distance Linas traveled in the short amount of time along with showing the terrain they had to cross as well as showing how long they spent at each time. On page 308 and on page 205 it was Christmas in Russia. This shows unusual timing because it took only 103 pages for an entire year to pass usually books happen within weeks. This book happens within years. This is important to the book because readers see how long our characters had to endure their troubles and readers start to worry for the characters, readers also get to see characters developing in ways only that much time can do to a