Literary Analysis- Between Shades of Gray

Author’s Note: In this piece I will be working on trying to go beyond just summarizing the story.  In Between Shades of Gray, Lina and her family are one night arrested by the secret Soviet Police and deported to Siberia while her their father is sentenced to death in a prison camp. After being shipped from place to place for weeks in filthy train cars, Lina and her family are struggling to survive. Hundreds of innocent people have died of illness and starvation in the unbearable living conditions. When Lina is put to the test of keeping herself and her family alive, she has no choice but to be strong and keep the will to live.

Lina is a very head strong girl. She has a way of doing things right and doesn’t let just anybody tell her otherwise. She lives a happy life with her father, mother and brother Jonas..  Lina’s life might have been seen as almost perfect, until the night she and her family are arrested by the Soviet Police. After living months filled with fear and uncertainty under the Soviet’s control, Lina’s mother and brother get very ill along with many others. Lina has no choice but to step up to the plate and be brave.

Lina’s determined personality leads her to do many courageous and risky things to keep her family together and alive. Throughout the book Lina shows her bravery. When her family is stationed in a camp, Lina has to learn on the spot how to take care of her wilting mother and brother. Long hard days at work with incredibly tiny portions of food don’t amount to any type of good health. Lina tries to draw clues out for her father, hoping he will find them and be reunited. The feeling of being with her father burns in Lina and she is driven to see him again. When Jonah gets sick, Lina’s mother is too tired and beat down to help much, so it’s put on Lina to care of him, her mother, and herself under insane circumstances.

Just when Lina manages to keep her family together and going again, they are suddenly shipped out to a forgotten iceland. It couldn’t have gotten much worse for a young girl like Lina, but she continued to fight. They last a brutal winter only to be greeted by a monster the next year. Sickness spreads in the camp very quickly, and Lina’s mother and hundreds of others die. Lina wills everything she has left into saving her brother and getting out alive.  

She took what she had seen her parents do by example and used it once they were gone. What she learned from her parents before and during the war shaped her as a person and made her who she is. Lina’s true self came out when she was put in a series of  life or death situations. By the end of the war, Lina finally thought of herself to be the person that she thought her parents always hoped for.