68 pages • 2 hours read
Ruta SepetysBetween Shades of Gray
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
The color gray
The title of the book is “between shades of gray,” and these “shades of gray” can refer to several things. The first is Lina’s mother’s gray coat, into which she has sewn “jewelry, papers, silver, and other valuables” (31) in preparation for the family’s escape from Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Unfortunately, the family is arrested before they can escape, and the valuables sewn in the lining of the coat become, instead, Lina’s mother’s bargaining chips over the course of their journey to Siberia, which she uses to bribe an NKVD officer to keep her son with her and to pay “rent” in the hovel they are assigned at the beet farm where they are first placed.
“Shades of gray” also refers to the grayness of the lives of those who have been deported. Lina’s father’s face is “gray” (60) the last time she sees him and the gray has “crept beneath [their] skin” (192), their food is gray, their homes are gray, their clothes are gray, and the sky is gray. The days spent in the Arctic during the polar night are gray. The lack of color in their lives is literal and metaphorical—symbolic of the lack of sustenance and joy, which has been replaced by brutality and starvation.
Finally, the “shades of gray” also refer to moral understanding that nothing is all bad or all good—there are always shades of gray just when we would like things to be “black and white”, or morally straightforward. Sepetys shows this by associating gray with positive things in Lina’s life—her memory of a beautiful gray dress she bought with her mother or the watercolor paint Lina is able to make from ashes. It is also the color of the man who wound his watch’s hair who, along with Elena, is one of the calm and kind leaders of their group. Gray is the color of the coat that, with its valuables sewn in the lining, no doubt saves their lives. Though gray is mostly associated with bad things—with the horror of imprisonment, torture, starvation, and attempted genocide—it is not exclusively associated with the bad, illustrating the moral complexity of life. The phrase “between shades of gray” is also a reference to the arctic horizon at the end of the polar night, when Lina sees a “sliver of gold” between shades of gray and knows that finally, the sun will return.
The pocket watch
There are two pocket watches of significance in the book. The first is Lina’s father’s pocket watch, which her mother gives to a NKVD officer in order to keep Jonas with her as they board the train that will take them to Siberia. The watch has Kostas Vilkas’ name engraved on it and, as a symbol of him, it highlights the awful decisions families and friends have to make—trading one person’s life for another at the whim of merciless NKVD guard.
The other significant watch is the gray-haired man’s, which he winds often. The man’s continual winding of his watch represents his attempt to keep some account of what is happening to them, because without recognition sense of time passing, it is as if they have been removed from history. The lack of witnessing—of accounting for what happened to the people of the Baltic states during, and for the fifty years following, WWII—is one of Sepetys’ primary concerns and the overall purpose of the book as a whole. In this context, we can understand his watch-winding as a symbolic attempt to keep this history alive.
The oval stone full of quartz and other minerals
During their journey to Siberia, Andrius finds a stone full of quartz that gleams like a jewel and provides a moment of beauty in an otherwise miserable experience. The stone becomes more than that, however, to Andrius, Lina, and Jonas, as they pass it between each other at crucial moments, using it as a kind of talisman to keep them safe. First Andrius gives it to Lina, as an expression of his growing affection for her, then Lina gives it to Jonas when he is dangerously ill with scurvy, then Jonas gives it back to Andrius as a Christmas present and an expression of his thanks for Andrius’s role in saving his life, and, finally, Andrius gives it to Lina again before she leaves with her mother and brother for a camp in the Arctic Circle. Lina returns to it, again and again, to give her strength and keep her connected to Andrius. And it seems to work, as all three survive Siberia and find each other Lithuania.
Munch
Edvard Munch is Lina’s favorite artist and the memory of his art sustains and informs her own artistic efforts after she is deported from Lithuania. Through Munch’s work and aesthetic, Lina sees how art can be about rendering the truths that lie underneath the surface—how “pain, love, and despair were links in an endless chain” (181), and that the artist must “paint it as [they] see it” (213).
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By Ruta Sepetys
