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68 pages 2 hours read

Ruta Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011

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Chapter 81-Epilogue

Chapter 81 Summary

Lina sleeps next to her mother’s body, trying to muffle her sobs. She feels hollow with grief, but realizes how much she wants to live; then feels guilty for wanting to live even though her parents are dead. The next day after work, Jonas and the man who winds his watch make a coffin, while Lina and Mrs. Rimas prepare Elena’s body. Lina finds fresh clothes in her mother’s suitcase for herself and Kostas—packed in preparation for their return to Lithuania—and Lina begins to cry again, realizing that her mother never stopped believing she would be able to go home. They dress Elena in the silk dress she meant for her return, and Lina finds the deed to their house and Joana’s address in Germany in the lining of Elena’s coat. That night Lina steals ice picks and shovels from the NKVD, and she and Jonas begin digging a grave on a little hill overlooking the sea. In the early morning, Mrs. Rimas and the man who winds his watch come to help them, along with the bald man and Janina. When they have dug a shallow grave, they carry Elena’s coffin up the hill, and people Lina doesn’t know join the procession. They walk past the NKVD barracks and Lina sees Kretzsky watching them.

Chapter 82 Summary

Lina paints a map to her mother’s gravesite using her ash paint and a feather from the snowy owl. The bald man talks about drowning themselves, and even though Lina feels the horrible absence of her mother, she tells him she has no interest in dying; perhaps he doesn’t either—he just thinks he deserves it. She asks him what keeps him from killing himself, and he tells her that it’s fear. Two days later, as a storm approaches, Lina goes to steal wood from the NKVD. Instead, she finds a drunken Kretzsky, who talks to her about her drawing and her mother. He tells her that her mother clearly used to be pretty—“krasivaya,” which means “beautiful, but with strength […] Unique” (320). Lina is angry that she has to learn Andrius’s word from Kretzsky and wants to smash him across the face with a log. He continues to talk, drunkenly telling her that he hates himself, just like she does, and asks if she wants to draw him like Munch. He tells her that he has seen all of her drawings, and that his own mother, who was an artist, is also dead. Lina tells him she is sorry to hear that his mother is dead before she can stop herself, and he snorts in response. He tells her she was Polish and that she died when he was five and his father remarried shortly after to a woman who hated Poles and Kretzsky himself. He wanted to disembark at Jakutsk because he wanted to go to his mother’s people in Kolyma but was not allowed to. He tells Lina to steal all the wood she wants. He turns away, and while Lina is cautiously gathering wood, she hears him crying. She tells herself to leave, but instead walks over to him and puts her hand on his shoulder, calling him Nikolai and telling him she is sorry. They stand there for a moment, then Lina turns to leave. Kretzsky stops her to tell her he is sorry for her mother. “Me, too” (321), she replies.

Chapter 83 Summary

Lina goes over the meeting with Kretzsky in her mind, amazed that she had the chance to hurt him and failed to take it. She tells no one about it, and the next day Kretzsky is gone from the camp. By February, the man who winds his watch has dysentery, both Janina and Jonas are fighting scurvy, and Janina’s mother is in the typhus jurta. Lina tries to beg at other jurtas, but everyone has their own sick and dying. Lina heats bricks for Janina and Jonas and then lies down next to Jonas the way they did with their mother. She can think of nothing else to do, and she tells Jonas she loves him.

Chapter 84 Summary

A day later, the storm abates, and they hear shouting. A man in civilian clothing bursts into their jurta asking whether anyone is sick. He is a doctor, Dr. Samodurov, and an “inspection officer” (327), and he enlists their help in tending to the sick. Under Dr. Samodurov’s supervision that day, they each eat “a bowl of pea soup and a half a kilo of fish” (327). He also helps them store food for future storms and plan a cemetery, which will include the man who wound his watch; he froze to death during the previous storm. The doctor gas also asked for the help of the “Evenks, native hunters and fishermen, who lived less than thirty kilometers away” (328) and who have brought warm clothes and supplies. When Dr. Samodurov gets ready to leave after ten days, he promises to take with him and mail all the letters Lina has written to Andrius. He asks about her father, and expresses doubt as to the certainty of Ivanov’s story, only because he has “met a lot of dead people” (328) who turn out to be alive but hidden away in prisons and camps. When Lina asks the doctor how he found them, he tells her “Nikolai Kretzsky” (328).

Chapter 85 Summary

After Dr. Samodurov’s life-saving visit, Jonas and Janina begin to heal. Lina clings to the hope that her father is alive, and they talk about whether the Evenks might help them again. Lina also has a recurring dream where she sees a figure coming toward her in the snow and can almost hear her father’s voice, and it reminds her of the memory of her father coming home for Christmas in the snow while Lina waits in the street for him. She teases him for being late, and he tells her she is “right on time” (330). 

One day when Lina goes out to find wood, she sees the sun has begun its return—“a tiny sliver of gold […] between shades of gray on the horizon” (330). With the appearance of the sun, Lina feels “Andrius moving close” (330). She promises again that she will see him and reaches into her pocket to squeeze the stone.

Epilogue Summary: April 25, 1995 Kaunaus, Lithuania

A construction crew in Kaunaus unearths a wooden box. Inside it is a “large glass jar full of papers” (332). They open it and read a letter from Mrs. Lina Arvydas who tells us that she and her brother buried the writings and drawings in July of 1954, after twelve years in Siberia. She says that those of them who survived Siberia, and there weren’t many, are viewed as criminals and cannot speak about what they endured. So they buried this “capsule of memories” to deliver the truth to the future. Lina mentions her husband, Andrius, who said that “evil will rule until good men or women choose to act” (332), so they created this “absolute record, to speak in a world where our voices have been extinguished” (332). Lina hopes that this “absolute record” will “stir your deepest well of human compassion” (333) and “prompt you to do something” (333).

Chapter 81-Epilogue Analysis

After Elena’s death, Lina realizes how much she wants to live. Even though she feels guilty about it, it is an important realization for her, and it coincides with another surprising moment in which she meets a drunken and emotionally vulnerable Kretzsky and feels empathy and compassion for him instead of hatred and anger. The last words she speaks to him before he disappears from the camp are “Me, too.” This phrase, “me, too,” is the same one Kretzsky said to her in response to “I hate you.” This time, when Lina says, “Me, too,” it is in response to sorrow, to the words, “I am sorry for your mother.” In this crucial scene, the hate that Lina wants to feel towards, that she believes she has a right to feel, is pushed aside and replaced by the empathy and compassion that both she and Kretzsky deserve.

Because Lina is able to act differently towards Kretzsky, he is able to act differently as well, and it means a world of difference for them all. He ensures that Dr. Samodurov gets to them before Jonas and Janina die. And because of Dr. Samodurov’s visit, Lina is able to see the “tiny sliver of gold” on the horizon that symbolizes hope. In the end, then, Kretzsky is the prime example of the ethic of compassion previously embodied by Elena and echoed in Andrius’s saying in the Epilogue to the book: “evil will rule until good men or women choose to act.” As soon as Kretzsky acts on his conscience, the whole world changes for the better. 

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