Between Shades of 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 The lack of color in their lives is literal and metaphorical—symbolic of the lack of sustenance and joy, which has been replaced by brutality and starvation.