Between Shades of Gray

“Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.”

This is one of the central questions of a book that examines the inhumanity of the Soviet regime. It also highlights the slow chipping away of life down to its barest form that the Vilkas experience at the hands of the NKVD, exchanging precious heirlooms for the hope of remaining together for a little while longer.

“I counted the people—forty-six packed in a cage on wheels, maybe a rolling coffin. I used my fingers to sketch the image in a layer of dirt on the floor near the front of the train car, wiping the drawings away and starting over, again and again.”

At this point, early in the story, Lina has no idea where they are going, why, or what will become of them—is the train car a cage or a coffin? It is significant that her response is to draw, using her fingers on a dirty floor, to try to bear witness to their conditions. The “starting over, again and again” speaks to her compulsion to do this: it’s not something she feels she should do, but, rather something she must do.

“I pushed the tip of my finger through the dirt on the floor, drawing his name. Munch. I would recognize his art anywhere. And Papa would recognize mine. That’s what he meant. He could find me if I left a trail of drawings.”

Here Lina is reflecting on what her father has said to her about her ability to help him through her art. The passage touches on the distinctiveness of an artist’s aesthetic and suggests, obliquely, that the purpose of art is to communicate, especially in times of great suffering.

“I stared at Andrius. Dried blood caked his teeth and the corners of his lips. His jaw was swollen. I hated them, the NKVD and the Soviets. I planted a seed of hatred in my heart. I swore it would grow to be a massive tree whose roots would strangle them all. 

‘How could they do this?’ I asked aloud.  I looked around the train car. No one spoke. How could we stand up for ourselves if everyone cowered in fear and refused to speak?

I had to speak. I’d write everything down, draw it all. I would help Papa find us.”  

This excerpt touches on several important thematic elements. The first is the struggle between love and hate. Lina has already mentioned her hatred for the NKVD several times and her hatred is not surprising, given what has been done to her and her family. Seeing Andrius beaten revives her hatred, and the image of a tree she uses to describe it is subtly juxtaposed with the message her father asked her to pass on to her mother, to “think of the oak tree” (62). We learn later that the oak tree is a reference to the tree Kostas fell out of while trying to talk to Elena the first time he met her, but even without knowing that, it’s clear that “the oak tree”, unlike Lina’s metaphorical tree, is not a symbol of hatred. What Lina will learn from her mother over the course of the book is the moral imperative of choosing love over hate, even love for one’s enemies.

Lina’s question, “How could they do this?” is also a central theme of the book, addressing not only the moral implications of what Stalin did to the people of the Baltic states, but also the question of how it was possible for this to happen without the rest of the world knowing. Lina’s second question, “How could we stand up for ourselves if everyone cowered in fear and refused to speak?” is, in part, the answer to her first, and it touches on another important the theme—the crucial role of witnessing in making sure that oppressors are held morally accountable. Lina’s decision to be a witness, though risky, is central to the book’s overall message.

The last sentence of this passage, however, reminds us that Lina is still a child and still innocent enough to believe that her parents can save her. By the end of the book, she will have realized her own strength and will be the one to save herself, by choosing life and love.

“Used to what, the feeling of uncontrolled anger? Or a sadness so deep, like your very core has been hollowed out and fed back to you from a dirty bucket?”  

This passage describes Lina’s two primary emotions throughout the book, the scope of which is aptly described as “uncontrolled” and “so deep.” Lina’s challenge is to come back from feelings of anger and sadness that are so consuming she feels as though she “has been hollowed out”—has cannibalized herself. This is a very useful metaphor for what this kind of sadness and anger can do to a person: it “eats them up inside” until nothing is left. Lina describes her sadness and anger in this way in a conversation with Andrius, which is significant, since Andrius is one of the people who warns Lina against giving in to hate.

“My stomach burned with hunger and my head throbbed. I missed drawing on real paper and longed for light to sketch properly.”

This passage briefly highlights how central art is to the book and to Lina’s life. Hunger and artistic impulse are practically equivalent in terms of sustenance, as Lina needs to draw almost as much as she needs to eat.

“Ona’s body got smaller and smaller as we drove away. She lay dead in the dirt, murdered by the NKVD. Somewhere, hundreds of miles away, her daughter decomposed in the grass. How would her family ever know what happened to her? How would anyone know what was happening to us? I would continue to write and draw whenever I had the chance. I would draw the commander firing, Mother on her knees with her head in her hands, and our truck driving away, the tires spitting gravel onto Ona’s dead body.”

Ona’s death renews Lina’s commitment to bearing witness—to leaving a record of what happened to them as a result of the Soviet occupation. Like her father did in helping his brother’s family escape Lithuania, Lina is taking a significant risk in continuing to write and draw about their experiences, but she feels compelled to, not just for artistic reasons, but also for moral ones.

“I looked up at his outstretched arm. I hesitated. He reached down farther. I grabbed his forearm. He grasped mine. I dug my toe into the dirt and let him pull me out. I stood at the side of the hole, face-to-face with Kretzsky. We stared at each other.” 

This is one of the moments—as Kretzsky lifts her out of the pit she has just been buried alive in by the commander—when Lina sees something in Kretzsky that makes him different from the other NKVD guards. Unfortunately, moments like these make her hate him all the more. She sees that he could make different choices—that his moral compass is better aligned than his counterparts in the NKVD—and the fact that he doesn’t makes him all the more deplorable to her.

“‘No, you have no idea. You have no idea how much I hate myself for putting my mother through this, how every day I think of ending my life so she can be free. But instead, my mother and I are using our misfortune to keep others alive. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? You’re too selfish and self-centered. Poor you, digging all day long. You’re just a spoiled kid.’”

This conversation between Lina and Andrius, during which Lina accuses Andrius of working with for the Soviets and he tells her that his mother is being forced to sleep with them in order to keep him alive, is a turning point in their relationship and in Lina’s development. Andrius calls her “selfish and self-centered,” and it is this childish self-involvement that she will have to overcome in order to enable the final moment of empathy with Kretzsky that saves their lives. Andrius’s reference to self-hatred is also important, as it is something that many of the deportees struggle with as a result of the impossible choices they are forced to make.

“Images streaked and bled together, contorted by my speed—Ulyushka, grinning with yellow teeth; Ona in the dirt, her one dead eye open; the guard moving toward me, smoke blowing from his pursed lips—Stop it, Lina—Papa’s battered face looking down at me from the hole; dead bodies lying next to train tracks; the commander reaching for my breast. STOP IT! I couldn’t. 

In this excerpt, Lina has just seen Mrs. Arvydas with a large welt on her face. She knows, now, that Mrs. Arvydas is being forced to sleep with the NKVD in exchange for her son’s life, and Lina does not know what to say to her or how to make sense of her situation, other than blurting out “I’m sorry” and running away. As she is running, a long series of images from the traumatic events of her arrest and deportation warp into one another, much like the contorted images produced by Munch. The series of images, punctuated by “Stop it!”, is both Lina’s attempt to stop her mind from subjecting her to these images and to voice her lament over her own inability to stop these things from happening at all.

She runs home and is calmed only by drawing Mrs. Arvydas in her pain—documenting it so that it is not forgotten—and thinking about Munch’s “theory that pain, love, and despair were links in an endless chain” (181).

“And that was the first news of Lithuania in months. Mother’s spirits soared. Despite her hunger and blisters from hard work, she was effervescent. She walked with a bounce. Hope, like oxygen, kept her moving.”

This moment highlights, in another way, why it is so crucial that Lina and people in similar situations not give into hatred and bitterness, because it leaves so little room for the kind of hope that Elena exhibits—that keeps her alive in the absence of all other sustenance.

“How did I get here? How did I end up in the arms of a boy I barely knew but knew I didn’t want to lose? I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius in Lithuania. Would I have liked him? Would he have liked me?”  

This passage raises some interesting questions about how profoundly the experience of deportation and imprisonment changes Lina and those like her. This is not the first time she has wondered whether she and Andrius would have hit it off had they not been thrown together in Siberia, and in these questions are the seeds of some larger questions about the nature of “true love” and the “true self.” Is it only the circumstances that created the Lina who fell in love with Andrius (and vice versa), or would they have loved each other no matter what?

“His lips formed the words ‘I’ll see you.’ He nodded in confirmation. I nodded back. The back gate slammed and I sat down. The truck lurched forward. Wind began to blow against my face. I pulled my coat closed and put my hands in my pockets. That’s when I felt it. The stone. Andrius had slipped it into my pocket. I stood up to let him know I had found it. He was gone.” 

The stone that Andrius slips into her pocket has become a symbol of their bond—not just the bond between two of them, but also with Jonas. Andrius first gives it to Lina when they are waiting to see if they will be sold into slavery—when they first realize their feelings for one another. Then Lina gives it to Jonas when he is sick with scurvy. Then Jonas gives it back to Andrius as a Christmas present. When Lina is sent away with her family, and Andrius stays behind at the camp in Altai, Andrius sends the stone with her as a physical reminder of their bond with one another and his commitment to see her again.

“‘To the Soviets, there is no more Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia. Stalin must completely get rid of us to see his vision unlittered.’ Litter. Is that we were to Stalin?”

This passage reminds us of the larger political context for the Soviet occupation of Lithuania and how everything that happened there is the collateral damage of one man’s “vision”—the kind of “vision” that turns people into “litter.” Highlighting this makes the eventual recovery of Lithuanian (and Latvian and Estonian) independence all the more remarkable for what Sepetys describes in the Author’s Note as its peacefulness and dignity.

“I got my paper. I sat near the firelight of the stove. Anger sizzled within me. It was so unfair. But I couldn’t hate Joana. It wasn’t her fault. Whose fault was it? I drew two hands clutching on to each other, yet pulling apart. I drew a swastika on her palm and the hammer and sickle on top of my hand, the Lithuanian flag shredded and falling in between.”

This passage describe Lina’s response to finding out that Joana and her family are the reason why Lina and her family have been deported and imprisoned. Through her art, Lina shows how she is beginning to understand the larger forces at work in their lives and how individuals are not always at fault for the things done in their name. The drawing also illustrates how much she misses her cousin, her “best friend” (285), with the “two hands clutching on to each other, yet pulling apart.”

“A comment in the margin from an art critic read, ‘Munch is primarily a lyric poet in color. He feels colors, but does not see them. Instead, he sees sorrow, crying, and withering.’ 

Sorrow, crying, and withering. I saw that in Ashes, too. I thought it was brilliant. 

Ashes. I had an idea. I grabbed a stick from next to the stove. I peeled back the outer skin to reveal the pulp. I separated the fibers, forming bristles. I grabbed a handful of snow from outside the door and carefully mixed in ashes from the barrel. The color was uneven, but made a nice gray watercolor.”  

This passage, in which Lina remembers what she read about Munch’s aesthetic, highlights her own artistic maturation. Through her rumination on Munch’s use of color to feel, Lina discovers a similar way to use gray to express “sorrow, crying, and withering.” Despite all she has endured, she is energized by this artistic goal to paint in uneven gray.

“I saw Jonas’s face rewind before me. He suddenly looked his age, vulnerable. Not like a young man fighting for his family, smoking books, but like the little schoolboy who ran into my bedroom the night we were taken. He looked at me, then at Mother. He walked over to her, lay down, and carefully put his arms around her. Snow blew through a crack in the mud, falling on their hair.  

This passage describes the moment after Lina tells Jonas that their father is dead. Lina sees him, in his grief, as a child again. What’s not clear, however, is whether this perception of Jonas has more to do with Lina’s grief over her father’s death than it does with his. His actions—to look first at his sister, who delivered the news, then at his mother, who is too weak and distraught to have delivered it herself—suggests a more mature understanding than Lina’s vision of him allows. Though we might see Jonas’s decision to hold his mother as betraying a little boy’s need for his mother’s comfort, that he “carefully put his arms around her” suggests that he is motivated to comfort her, rather than the other way around.

“I tried to sketch but couldn’t. When I started to draw, the pencil moved by itself, propelled by something hideous that lived inside of me. Papa’s face contorted. His mouth pulled in agony. His eyes radiated fear. I drew myself, screaming at Kretzsky. My lips twisted. Three black snakes with fangs spurted out of my open mouth.” 

This is the one time where Lina’s turns to art as solace and finds it troubling instead, because of the truth it shows her about herself. In the wake of finding out that her father is dead and screaming in hatred at Kretzsky, she finds herself drawing a vision of herself that is uncomfortably close to the way she wanted to draw the commander. With the commander, she saw his whole head replaced by a nest of hissing snakes. The “three black snakes with fangs” that she envisions coming out of her own mouth seem like the nascent version of the commander’s snakes: giving in to hatred is how one becomes someone like the commander. Given this understanding of Lina’s growing hatred, her sketching of her father in terror can be read as both his fear and agony at the hands of the Soviets and as his fear and anguish over what his daughter is becoming.

“People I didn’t know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn’t ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren’t to benefit. We’d been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we’d get a little closer.”

This is one of many moments in the book where people show each other compassion without expectation of reward and disregard for the possible consequences. Experiencing these moments of compassion helps Lina to become compassionate herself. Lina also notes that “they were happy to help someone, to succeed at something,” which points to one of the non-physical casualties of this kind of imprisonment—the death of agency. When a person feels as though s/he can never make any difference at all, what hope is there for the future and what point is there to continuing? Lina is surprised that people are willing to help her, but she realizes they have been pushed past the kind of selfishness engendered by deprivation: when so much has been taken away, people continue to give the only thing they can precisely because they can.

“The bald man’s questions kept me awake in thought. Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived? I was sixteen, an orphan in Siberia, but I knew. It was the one thing I never questioned. I wanted to live. […] Part of me felt guilty. Was it selfish that I wanted to live, even though my parents were gone? Was it selfish to have wants beyond my family being together? I was now the guardian of my eleven-year-old brother. What would he do if I perished?”

This passage shows Lina’s struggle with survivor’s guilt. By giving most of her meager food supply to her children for months, Elena has effectively sacrificed herself so that they will live, and Lina feels guilty for not being willing to do the same. Her commitment to life, however, is exactly the outcome her mother wanted—her children alive, together, and caring for one another.

“It couldn’t end like this. It couldn’t. What was life asking of me? How could I respond when I didn’t know the question?

‘I love you,’ I whispered to Jonas.”

Lina struggles with the question of the meaning of life after her mother has died and Jonas lies dangerously ill with scurvy again. This is, perhaps, the lowest point of Lina’s time in Siberia, and thought she struggles with the question, the answer that comes to her—love—is the one that her mother has been trying to teach her all along.  

“I began my walk through the snow, five kilometers to the tree line. That’s when I saw it. A tiny sliver of gold appeared between shades of gray on the horizon. I stared at the amber band of sunlight, smiling. The sun had returned.”  

This is the passage from which the novel’s title is taken. The “tiny sliver of gold” that appears “between shades of gray on the horizon” is the sun returning after six months of the arctic polar night, and it represents the return of Lina’s hope for the future as well. Though she has lost her mother, her brother has been saved, twice, Dr. Samodurov has improved their living conditions, and she holds out hope that Ivanov was wrong or lying about her father’s death. 

“My husband, Andrius, says that evil will rule until good men or women choose to act. I believe him. This testimony was written to create an absolute record, to speak in a world where our voices have been extinguished. These writings may shock or horrify you, but that is not my intention. It is my greatest hope that the pages in this jar stir your deepest well of human compassion. I hope they prompt you to do something, to tell someone. Only then can we ensure that this kind of evil is never allowed to repeat itself.”

This excerpt is from the letter that Lina buries in a jar with her drawings and writings from Siberia, and it describes her purpose in burying this “capsule of memories”—to bear witness to the atrocities that were committed, not in revenge, but to prevent them from being repeated. This is the final example of Lina’s commitment to love, compassion, and moral good her parents instilled in her, through both words and deeds.