Shame In Ruta Septys Salt To The Sea

In the novel Salt to the Sea by Ruta Septys, Emilia, a young Polish girl, is free from her shame. Shame; a noun, meaning the distress and uneasiness you feel after an event is wrong. This feeling can eat away at an individual, even those who haven’t committed heinous actions, this applies to Emilia. She fell victim to a sexual assault by a Russian soldier resulting in her pregnancy. As much as one may confide and support her, bearing a baby at only 15 as a result of malicious actions can drop the weight of shame onto one's shoulders. She is hunted; pursued by a dreadful feeling of past occurrences, lugging it with her through her story. However, she hid this. Right outside the walls of her mind, nobody would truly understand how she was feeling, so naturally, she faked her stability.

And sometimes, when I did a really good job at pretending, I even fooled myself.”(147) This is her way of coping with her shame, fake it till you make it if you will, but she isn’t really overcoming her shame at this stage, she’s just masking it. Since the very beginning of the novel, she has hid her pregnancy behind her coat, didn’t talk about it, and whenever she thought about it, she’d override it with happy thoughts to hide it from herself: pretending. Being ashamed of oneself is difficult to overcome but not impossible, enough where a few words can break through the barrier. In the maternity ward on the Wilhelm Gustloff, Emilia gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Halinka, the baby of the trauma she faced from the Russian soldier. However, as soon as Emilia's eyes lay on the baby, her heart melts, and as soon as she holds her in her arms, she begins to smile. This is when Florian sheds more light on the