Between The Shades Of Gray Character Analysis

After reading The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, I have learned that Lina is a dynamic character. At the beginning of the book, Lina is selfish eventually, Lina becomes responsible and Lucky. These character traits were observed through Lina’s actions, dialogue, relationships, choices, and problems. The City of Ember connects to my life because when I was young I was also selfish.But then over time, I became more responsible and I am much luckier.

“I looked back to the hole. What if we were digging our own grave?” (128). Lina, the main character of the book, says when forced to dig a hole with three other women. This is just one example of what Lina, her family, and millions of others have to endure while at labor camps. Ruta Sepetys novel, “Between Shades of Gray” shares the story of one family who was arrested and brought to a labor camp. Lina and Jonas were arrested, along with their mother by the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD). They were separated from their father, taken to the Altai Labor Camp, and forced to work for little food and water. Throughout the story, Ruta Sepetys shows just how much a person can change and learn in one year. In the novel, Lina starts out as a naive girl but becomes a resourceful and intelligent young lady.

Authors in many instances use the main elements in the story such as setting and narrative to prove a point in the story. For example, writers often use characters, their actions, and their interaction with other characters to support or prove a theme. In the short story “Our Thirteenth Summer”, Barry Callaghan effectively uses characters to develop the theme that childhood is fragile and easily influenced. One of the ways that Callaghan makes effective use of characters to develop the theme is by describing the tension between Bobbie and his parents. This usage of characters supports the theme because Bobbie’s childhood is no longer free to do what he wishes, but has to bow down to his parents’

Lina Vilkas was a fifteen year old girl who had endured through Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror when her country, Lithuania, had been taken over by the dictator. Her whole family had been viciously kicked out of their home and packed into a cart in the middle of the night. Spending six weeks in a train car with a group of strangers who had soon become close companions, her inevitable journey into becoming a completely different person began. From that point on she had to survive on wit and ability if she wanted to make it out of her absolute personal hell. With some help along the way, Lina had become an entirely new person by the end of her story. The character Lina Vilkas has experienced metamorphosis due to the invasion of Lithuania and the separation from the life she once knew, and her drastic change has affected her and the people around her, both negatively and positively.

Jimmy knows too well the agonies of abandonment. First, when his mother, Cecilia, ran away with Richard to pursue a better lifestyle. Then, due to his father’s, Damacio Baca, alcoholisms and violent behavior; he also had to leave Jimmy behind. In spite of the drawbacks from abandonment to being a maximum security prisoner in Arizona State Prison, Jimmy preserver’s the darkness of prison by overcoming his illiteracy. However Cecilia and Damacio is not as fortunate as their child; Cecilia is shot by Richard after confronting him for a divorce and Damacio chokes to death after he is released from the detox center(Baca 263). Therefore the most significant event in this section of the memoir, A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca is the death of Jimmy’s parents.

I was pleased to have attended a lecture cosponsored by the Ethics Center, the Fresno State office of the president, the Fresno Bee and Valley PBS. The lecture began with Dr. Castro recognizing a few leaders on campus, including a past Fresno State president, Dr. John D. Welty and campus volunteer Mary Castro. Dr. Castro then mentioned a few things about Mr. Brooks stating that he is a columnist for the New York Times and an analyst for the PBS “News Hour” and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Dr. Brooks also teaches at Yale University, one the finest university in the country. Dr. Castro continued by saying that he learned that Mr. Brooks office hours are from 9am to 1pm and how “cool” it sounded to him. I was surprised how many people attended the event. I was fortunate to find a seat. David Brooks mentioned how he has some remote roots in the Central Valley because his father grew in Chowchilla, CA but Mr. Brooks grew in New York.

In the San Fernando Valley during the summer of 1962, Scotty Smalls is the new boy in the neighborhood seeking desperately to fit in. He would be welcomed on the local sandlot baseball team that practices every day which only has eight players. Smalls however can't play baseball on his first visit to the sandlot he finds himself in the outfield with a fly ball descending toward him which bounces off his glove causing the other boys except “Benny the jet” Rodriguez the team's leader to burst out laughing Smalls is humiliated and leaves. Smalls asks his Step-Father to teach him how to play, and while his Step- Father agrees Smalls cannot catch or throw the ball. Benny soon teaches him what he needs to know, and with Benny's support he gets a place on the team. Meanwhile behind the wall

Grace has been told for more than half her life that she was crazy. Her mother’s death that she witnesses was an accident, there was no scarred man, and there was nothing she could do to change what had happened. But Grace knew they were wrong. With the help of her friends Noah, Megan and Rosie, she managed to discover that the scarred man was Dominic, the first love of her mother, who was there to kill her mother, but chose instead to stage her death. Grace came down just as Dominic was taking the picture, and picked up the gun that was lying on the floor. Firing blinding, she missed Dominic and shot her mother instead. The traumatic moment of shooting her mother was blocked from Grace’s mind as it was unable to handle what she did. Her family tries to protect her from this, saying it was an accident, trying to get Grace to stop pushing. When pushing too hard, Grace discovers the truth of what happened that night, and what she did, and with the

Who’s Lina Lovaton? Unless you’re really into the life of Trujillo, I would expect you to know the answer. Even though she comes from a wealthy Dominican family, before meeting Trujillo wasn’t someone famous. As part of the Dominican Elites Lina had access to the best education, she attended “ Convento Inmaculada Concepcion” which at the time was the school of choice for rich kids. The school was located in a wealthy neighborhood, where it wasn’t rare to see Trujillo around. During one of Trujillo's usual visit to that neighborhood, he notice Lina playing volleyball at the school’s playground. He was enchanted by her beautiful blonde hair, and by how mature she looked for age. Using his power, and the status of president to convinced young

The book “Ugly” by Robert Hoge it is a inspiring, true story about, Robert, a boy who grew up in Brisbane, Australia, with a tumor the size of a tennis ball on his face and two deformed legs. Robert had four other brothers and sisters, who were all older. The story is the journey of Robert Hoge and his life with artificial legs and deformed face, and all the challenges he faced along the way.

Lina’s mother, Elena Vilkas, is a pretty woman that knows Russian and goes out of her way to help everyone. Sadly, she falls ill after hearing her husband has been shot, and dies. Her husband, Kostas is separated from the rest of the family, and is sent to a prison. Lina attempts to contact her father multiple times, but it is unknown whether he is dead or alive.

Everybody in the world is focused on Nazi Germany, and not many people cared about the disappearance of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from the world map. If more people were focused on them then they would have noticed the horrible things they were doing to these people. Lina is forced to face the horrible truths of the world at the mere age of 15. She fought for survival at a time where most of the people gave up and died. The NKVD did not care about the well-being of the Lithuanians and this was difficult for Lina to be put through.

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

Oftentimes, when writing literature, authors tend to form story elements that follow a certain archetype. An archetype can be any common example of a character, theme, symbol, situation, or setting that reappears in various genres of writing, and is a universal pattern. Particularly, character archetypes are general models or outlines that other characters can be based on, like a ruler, a hero, or a rebel. In The Safest Lies, the story focuses on Kelsey, who grew up terrified of the wicked world outside of her secure home. Her apprehension was instilled by her mother, Mandy, who was kidnapped when she was seventeen. After not stepping outside of their house since her miraculous escape over a decade before, Mandy tragically disappeared

In both the movie and the book Lina is curious about the mayor's actions and the government's decisions. On Lina’s way to give the mayor a message she finds herself “getting lost” in the building and lurking around where she isn't supposed to be and seeing questionable things that her eyes shouldn't be seeing. Equally important to the plot of this book is that in both the book and movie Lina and Doon switch jobs which causes them to find out some big things, but I wouldn't wanna spoil