Often when considering conflicts, readers, tend to zero in on it, and the characters that are involved. It’s rarely thought that setting is the root of conflict, but The Book Thief and Between Shades of Gray’s settings are both examples of how a larger conflict beyond any one person, can easily be the root of their struggle. The books both take place during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s during World War II. The lives of these young women are faced with great difficulty because of the war that is happening around them. They love and lose all because of the setting they are placed in. The Book Thief takes place in the late 1930s in Nazi Germany, while Between Shades of Gray takes place in the early 1940’s, in Lithuania, and later the work
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He is separated from Lina, her younger brother Jonas, and her Mother. Not only was the family brutally ripped from their home and their life in Lithuania, but they will be forced to do extremely physically demanding work, with nothing but scraps of food to show for it. These camps were extremely perilous and the weather was always frigid. This is displayed in quotes such as this one,“if we so much as stumbled they reduced our rations” (Sepetys 163) it helps convey how truly harsh the conditions were. Although Lina tries to hold on to her hope, by sending messages to her father on handkerchiefs that are passed around in the camps, there is little to none left in all of the workers. For the workers in the camps any news of home was welcomed, when they received news from Lithuania, the first in months Lina’s mother “walked with a bounce. Hope,like oxygen, kept her moving.” (183). This quote exhibits how little information of the outside world they received , which adds to the conflict of Lina trying to communicate, and find her father. If the conditions were not like this to begin with, her father may have been moved to the same camp, or she would have been able to know about his whereabouts, and communicate with him. The war and the actions that were taken as part of it affected politics drastically, but it also affected individuals and families. In other words, the war is the root of Lina’s struggles, and restricts her from everything she almost had. It took her father and mother away from her, and drastically altered the course of her
He is separated from Lina, her younger brother Jonas, and her Mother. Not only was the family brutally ripped from their home and their life in Lithuania, but they will be forced to do extremely physically demanding work, with nothing but scraps of food to show for it. These camps were extremely perilous and the weather was always frigid. This is displayed in quotes such as this one,“if we so much as stumbled they reduced our rations” (Sepetys 163) it helps convey how truly harsh the conditions were. Although Lina tries to hold on to her hope, by sending messages to her father on handkerchiefs that are passed around in the camps, there is little to none left in all of the workers. For the workers in the camps any news of home was welcomed, when they received news from Lithuania, the first in months Lina’s mother “walked with a bounce. Hope,like oxygen, kept her moving.” (183). This quote exhibits how little information of the outside world they received , which adds to the conflict of Lina trying to communicate, and find her father. If the conditions were not like this to begin with, her father may have been moved to the same camp, or she would have been able to know about his whereabouts, and communicate with him. The war and the actions that were taken as part of it affected politics drastically, but it also affected individuals and families. In other words, the war is the root of Lina’s struggles, and restricts her from everything she almost had. It took her father and mother away from her, and drastically altered the course of her