Appearance and Reality in Ruta Sepetys’ “Between Shades of Gray”
What is reality? This question has fascinated the human race since the beginning of time, but can never receive a concrete answer. Perhaps it is because humans exist in an artificial society that makes it nearly impossible to see past people’s made up facades. Possibly because the world contains billions and billions of minds that perceive events uniquely and incapable of fathoming anyone else’s reality but their own. Whatever the case might be, it is becoming noticeably more difficult to tell apart the truth from a convincing front. The world is getting increasingly more commercialized, deceptive and self centric. However, this is not a new development in the modern world as …show more content…
Lina Vilkas lets her emotions spiral so that her biased and uninformed perceptions become concrete. An example of this is when Nikolai was helping her mother and Lina refused because of the unjustified anger she felt towards him; ”Get away from her! Stay away. I hate you. Do you hear me? I HATE YOU!” (Sepetys 298) Lina lets her anger cloud her judgement and stop her from seeing the reality of the situation. Had she let Nikolai help Elena to their jurta, neither mother or daughter would have suffered as much as they did. Another instance where Lina allows her emotions get the best of her is when she takes the file on her family from the kolkhoz office. When she finishes drawing the commander, Lina proceeds to steal the file; ”I turned to pick up my drawing pad. I saw the file on the desk...I grabbed the file and shoved it in my coat.“Yes, let’s go,” I said, rushing through the door. Jonas had no idea what I had done.”(Sepetys 218) Lina lets desire and curiosity overtake her knowing that stealing from the NKVD had dire consequences. Ultimately, her actions could have affected her family or the other Lithuanians severely. She failed to recognize this and took the file for her own personal satisfaction. Lina lets her intense emotions take over her in the moment. This leads to the final reason on why she cannot see reality, which is having no foresight about how her accusations hurt
What is reality? This question has fascinated the human race since the beginning of time, but can never receive a concrete answer. Perhaps it is because humans exist in an artificial society that makes it nearly impossible to see past people’s made up facades. Possibly because the world contains billions and billions of minds that perceive events uniquely and incapable of fathoming anyone else’s reality but their own. Whatever the case might be, it is becoming noticeably more difficult to tell apart the truth from a convincing front. The world is getting increasingly more commercialized, deceptive and self centric. However, this is not a new development in the modern world as …show more content…
Lina Vilkas lets her emotions spiral so that her biased and uninformed perceptions become concrete. An example of this is when Nikolai was helping her mother and Lina refused because of the unjustified anger she felt towards him; ”Get away from her! Stay away. I hate you. Do you hear me? I HATE YOU!” (Sepetys 298) Lina lets her anger cloud her judgement and stop her from seeing the reality of the situation. Had she let Nikolai help Elena to their jurta, neither mother or daughter would have suffered as much as they did. Another instance where Lina allows her emotions get the best of her is when she takes the file on her family from the kolkhoz office. When she finishes drawing the commander, Lina proceeds to steal the file; ”I turned to pick up my drawing pad. I saw the file on the desk...I grabbed the file and shoved it in my coat.“Yes, let’s go,” I said, rushing through the door. Jonas had no idea what I had done.”(Sepetys 218) Lina lets desire and curiosity overtake her knowing that stealing from the NKVD had dire consequences. Ultimately, her actions could have affected her family or the other Lithuanians severely. She failed to recognize this and took the file for her own personal satisfaction. Lina lets her intense emotions take over her in the moment. This leads to the final reason on why she cannot see reality, which is having no foresight about how her accusations hurt