Analysis Of The Book 'Between Shades Of Gray'

Aristotle once theorized, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” The book, “The Color of Water” describes the lives of James and Ruth McBride and their journeys to find this happiness. Both of these characters, among other characters in the book struggled for the majority of their lives with the issues of race. They felt as if they were caught between two different worlds; the world of blacks and the world of whites. These struggles left all of the characters feeling forlorn. In McBride’s memoir it is made clear that in order to find happiness, the characters must first be able to confront and then overcome the racial divisions that were so prominent in their lives.

The book Black Hearts opened my eyes to how leadership from a single Officer can have a grappling effect on such a wide range of soldiers from the lowest of ranks. One of the best takeaways from Black Hearts is to never do anything: illegal, unethical, or immoral. Although this is a easy statement to repeat, Black Hearts demonstrates the difficulties that lie behind these words. It has also painted a picture of how leadership can topple extremely quickly from a top down view. The Army is portrayed in a bad light throughout the book relentlessly. This is due to the concentration of poor leadership of the 1-502nd Regiment (Referred to as “First Strike”), a battalion of the 101st Airborne Division.

In the story, gray is brought up many times. War, like the color gray, is dull and depressing. War distorts humanity, making everything civil seem to vanish. Bierce uses the color gray to convey this message. Bierce writes, “-a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Fahrquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands” (Bierce 2). This man, appears to be a confederate, hence the gray-clad uniform he is wearing. But this man is actually a Federal scout. The color gray made him seem trustworthy and on the same side of the war as Fahrquhar. This scout knows Fahrquhar is a southern plantation owner and decides to try convincing him to commit a crime. The crime of burning down a Union bridge. The scout does this so Federal soldiers could catch Fahrquhar and hang him. A scout wearing a gray uniform in hope of hanging a regular southern man is an act of complete inhumanity. This scout would not have done this if war was not present. This example just shows war brings out the monster in people. The color gray allows this scout to accomplish

“Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.” This book is Between Shades of Grey, by Ruta Sepetys. The genre of this book is historical fiction. The book is about a 13-year-old girl, Lina, and her family. They are a Jewish family at the time of the Nazi’s. This was not a very good time in Lina, her brother, or her mom’s life. All of a sudden Lina and her family find themselves on a railroad cattle car and they don’t know where they are going or where their dad is. On the cattle car, Lina meets a cute boy her age named Andrius who is trying to find his dad, also. Lina and Andrius go and try to find their dads. Lina finder hers, but Andrius comes up empty-handed. When they get off the cattle car, which is 1 year later, Lina is split up from her dad, so she has to work to try to find him again but then she finds out he is dead. Lina gets out of the camp they are in and her and Andrius get married. In the book Between Shades Of Grey, by Ruta Sepetys Lina is courageous, determined, and loving.

In this world what people often forget about that a human can do is cause mass destruction, things one should remember can be forgotten easily and just as fast as it came it leave, this can be seen in the books around us. Authors share their opinion through the words they write talking about society and how if we keep going the direction we are going we will find ourselves in deep trouble, the messages authors are trying to send can be seen through social commentary, many books have powerful messages behind them; especially in dystopian novels and movies. They show these messages through diction,syntax, imagery, and character development; for examples the books and movies; Fahrenheit 451, Incarceron, Wall-E, and Hunger games. The authors Ray Bradbury, Catherine Fisher, Andrew Stanton, and Suzanne Collins all convey a message through their works through syntax, diction, camera angles, and imagery; emphasizing their warnings of what they fear may happen.

Each novel challenges the characters to be more applicable to the perception of the grayness the world and life contain.

Montag is someone who is shy and keeps his thoughts to himself, but thinks many things. He shows that he is distracted instead of being happy throughout the book. At the time, he was walking home from work and was looking at Clarisse. Clarisse is a girl who would roam the streets and was also Montag's neighbor. She walks over to Guy and they start to have a conversation while walking to their houses. They discussing if talking about to see if Montag is really happy or if he was lying. She keeps questioning him. Bradbury explains “He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as true state affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run across the lawn with the mask and the way

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is set in 2053 in a city like Las Angeles. Bradbury wrote this novel in 1953, 100 years before the time this book was set. He intended to talk about a future society. Not only predicting a future society today but, predicting the way people are turning out. People in this society think it’s okay to burn pages of knowledge rather than read them. Firemen in this society have a job to burn books. The mood of this novel is terror and misery because people who own books live like this just to keep their books.

Book-burning is the first thing that is explained about this future based society of Fahrenheit 451. Burning books is the obliteration of the single thought on paper or in one word- censorship. Books are considered evil because they make people question and think. All intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge must be quelled for the good of the state — for the good of conformity. Without ideas, everyone conforms, and as a result, everyone should be happy. When books and new ideas are available to people, conflict and unhappiness occur. Some of the many different motifs in the novel Fahrenheit 451 are conveyed through the use of various sardonic lines and connotations planted throughout the book. On the matter of technology and modernization it explains how TV reigns supreme in the future because of the "happiness" it offers. People are content when they don’t have to think, or so the story goes. TV aside, technology is the government’s means of oppression, but also provides the renegade’s opportunity to subvert. Rules and order is another popular topic written into the book. It is stated that “All books can be beaten down with reason.” This was said by Captain Betty, a quote ironically coming from a book itself. Much of the restrictions on the general populous are self-enforced. The government has taken away the citizens’ ability to dissent and marred all dissatisfaction with a cheap version of "happiness," a.k.a. TV. This means

Sandy Hook Elementary School. San Bernardino. Paris. What do all of these places have in common? They fell victim to unpredictability. Mass shootings are not new to our society, but they are still a devastating problem that should not exist any longer. Mass shootings connect to the novel, Fahrenheit 451, through both the unnecessary violence and the absence of humanity that are evident in the novel. Mass shootings are a devastating problem in our society, and now their numbers have escalated to a new level. This change reflects how both our society and our humanity is beginning to crumble, solutions like banning unnecessary and excessive fire arms are currently being enacted.

The three writers grew up in different places. In the Essay, “The Soul of Black Folks” , Du Bois illustrates the soul of a black young boy who saw his life in two different worlds. The world of a black person and the world of a white person; the life of being black and the problems in the hill of New England where he grew up and faced racial discrimination. Du Bois was a sociologist, writer, educator and a controversial leader of the negro thought. Alice Walker wrote about how creative and artistic our mothers and grandmothers were in her essay “In Search Of Our Mother 's Garden”. She grew up in the 1960s in south Georgia where her mother worked as a maid to help support her eight children. Alice described her as a loving, strong and talented artist who showed her work in the garden. She wrote about her mother 's garden and how happy and radiant her mother was when she worked in her garden despite her busy days. She had no moment to sit down to feed her creative spirit because she was busy been a mother, a provider and a slave in the face of the society. She grew up seeing the struggles of hardworking,creative and strong African American mothers and grandmothers. She was a poet, novelist, and a womanist who was against racial and gender oppression of women. Glenn Loury grew up in Chicago’s South Side, where he attended political rallies. He described his childhood as being part of lower middle class. The writing of Du Bois , Alice Walker and Glenn Loury manifests

“Then, moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator. He caught her, shrieking. He held her and she tried to fight away from him scratching,” (63). In the novel Fahrenheit 451 follows the protagonist, Guy Montag, and his interactions with society discouraging and encouraging his discovery of the illegal books. Along the way he understands who are the poisonous people in his dystopian world and who are not; changing his perspective to lose trust in his wife Mildred, from previous quote, and finding safety with Faber, a retired professor he came by one day in a park. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 the author demonstrates the idea that when there is censorship in the world, ignorance will follow because when a subject is hidden from one anything they do regarding it is under the impression of their lack of knowledge surrounding the topic, this becomes more relevant when Ray Bradbury acknowledges the emotions of people who have read books and whom haven't and their general opinions of them.

Ruta Sepetys is the author for Between the Shades of Gray, a novel that captures the truth of Siberian camps and the annexation of the Balkans by Stalin. Ruta Sepetys got the idea to write this fictional story when she visited her family in Lithuania and got the chance to discover more about her heritage. She got very fascinated about her family’s struggle to keep memories of her grandparents because of the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR. This conflict urged her to find out more about the feelings and people’s memoirs during this period in World War II so, she started interviewing the survivors from the Siberian gulags and gathered information to write her novel. The book was also inspired by her father, Jonas Sepetys, who escape

Jalapeno bagels is about a boy named Pablo whom cannot decide what to take to school for International Day. He wants to bring something from his parents’ baker. He wants something that represent his heritage but he cannot decide what to bring. His mother who is Mexican baked pan dulce and change bars. His father who is Jewish baked bagels and challah. Both of the bake good were good but while helping his parents with the bakery on Sunday morning, Pablo made a decision on what to bring. He decided to bring jalapeno bagels because they are a mixture both of his parents and just like him too. The multicultural representations in the story line is Mexican and Jewish. The pictures that were drawn in the book, the family has the same color of skin even though the parents are different cultures and the main character is mixed. There were no different skin colors.

Despite all the gloom and despair, the title also hints that “gray” (puzzling) events point to hope in the future (just like the sun comes out after a storm). James learns in the dentist’s office that accepted ideas and traditions must be questioned and changed when he observes a preacher and a young student get into a debate. The preacher believes in acceptance that offers no hope. For example, he believes that it is not our place to question life; that is up to God. Under this