Art as Testimony and Resistance in Between Shades of Gray
The Claim: Lina’s Art as a Weapon Against Erasure
In Ruta Sepetys’s Between Shades of Gray, art is not a luxury—it is a lifeline. Fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas uses her drawings and writings as a hidden record of truth, a personal coping mechanism, and a secret communication tool to find her father. The Soviet regime attempts to strip deportees of their identities, histories, and humanity, but Lina’s creative acts resist that erasure. Her sketchbook becomes a form of testimony that preserves what the NKVD wants to destroy: the memory of who she is, where she came from, and what happened to her family. This testimony outlasts her captivity, eventually speaking for a silenced generation.
The novel shows that resisting tyranny can take quiet, invisible forms. Lina’s art is smuggled, hidden, and buried—but it never stops telling the truth.
Tracing the Theme Through Three Pivotal Moments
1. The Museum Epiphany: Art Becomes a Map to Her Father
Early in the story, Lina recalls a school trip to an art museum where she saw a charcoal portrait by Edvard Munch. She is captivated by the emotion in the piece: “The subtleties within his hair blended so softly, yet created strong variation.” That encounter plants a seed. Later, as she sits at her desk, she remembers her father’s words—that she could help him. She realizes, “Papa would recognize mine. That’s what he meant. He could find me if I left a trail of drawings.”
This moment transforms art from a personal passion into a deliberate act of resistance. Lina understands that her drawings can function as breadcrumbs—silent signals that might reunite her family. Even when separated by thousands of miles, she believes her father will recognize her style and know she is alive. The secret language of her sketchbook becomes a thread connecting them across the Siberian wilderness.
2. The Ashes Drawing: Processing Unbearable Truth
After Lina learns the full reason for her family’s deportation—her parents helped her uncle escape to Germany—she is flooded with anger and betrayal. “How selfish! How could they do this to us?” She struggles to process the news. Instead of screaming or crying, she reaches for her art supplies. But in the Arctic hut, there are no store-bought paints. She improvises: she peels bark from a stick to make bristles, mixes snow with ashes from the stove, and creates a gray watercolor.
With this makeshift paint, she draws “two hands clutching on to each other, yet pulling apart. I drew a swastika on her palm and the hammer and sickle on top of my hand, the Lithuanian flag shredded and falling in between.” This image is not just an emotional release—it is a political statement. It captures the impossible position of the Baltic people, caught between two totalitarian empires. The act of creating it under the noses of guards is an act of defiance.
Explore Lina’s sketchbook as a symbol
Here, art serves multiple functions: it helps Lina make sense of complicated feelings; it records a historical truth that the Soviets want to bury; and it does so in a form that can be hidden. The ashes drawing is a miniature time capsule, encoding a complex geopolitical reality in a single image.
3. The Buried Jar: Testimony That Survives Its Creator
The novel’s epilogue leaps forward to 1995. Construction workers in Kaunas, Lithuania, unearth a wooden box containing a glass jar. Inside are papers—the writings and drawings of Lina Arvydas (formerly Lina Vilkas). Her letter inside the jar explains:
“The writings and drawings you hold in your hands were buried in the year 1954… There are many thousands of us, nearly all dead. Those alive cannot speak… We put our trust in you… We trust you with truth.”
This burial is the ultimate act of artistic resistance. Lina knows that speaking openly could mean death, even after her return from Siberia. So she commits her story to paper, seals it, and leaves it for a future reader. This jar becomes her witness. It proves that her generation existed, that they suffered, and that their voices were not completely extinguished.
Read about the real historical context in the author’s note
The epilogue transforms the entire novel. Everything Lina drew and wrote was not just for herself or her father—it was for us. The reader becomes the discoverer of the jar. By reading her testimony, we fulfill her hope: “I hope they prompt you to do something, to tell someone.”
Character and Symbol Connections
Characters Who Sustain the Theme
| Character | Role in Art as Testimony & Resistance |
|---|---|
| Lina Vilkas | The primary artist. She creates drawings to communicate with her father, to process trauma, and to leave a permanent record. |
| Elena Vilkas | Lina’s mother, who fights back in other ways (smashing china, speaking Russian fluently, bribing officers). She supports Lina’s art and protects the sketchbook. |
| Jonas Vilkas | Lina’s younger brother. He often comments on her drawings, helping her refine her ideas. He carries the secret of the jar into adulthood. |
| Andrius Arvydas | Lina’s future husband. He understands the need for secrecy and helps her preserve the testimony. |
| Kostas Vilkas | Lina’s father, the intended recipient of her visual messages. He represents the hope that art can bridge even the widest separation. |
See all key characters in the novel
Symbols That Reinforce the Theme
While the sketchbook is the most direct symbol of artistic testimony, other symbols enrich the theme:
- The stone: A gift from her father that Lina keeps as a talisman. Like her drawings, the stone is a small, hard piece of her former life that the NKVD could not confiscate.
- Bread on the windowsill: A symbol of family love and memory. It is not an artwork, but it is a meaningful gesture—like a drawing, it communicates care without words.
- The oak tree: Represents endurance through the seasons. Just as the tree survives harsh winters, Lina’s art survives the repression and grows into testimony.
Complexity and Contradiction
No theme is without its tensions. Art as testimony and resistance in Between Shades of Gray raises difficult questions:
- Is art enough? Lina’s drawings do not free anyone. They do not stop the beatings, the starvation, or the deaths. Her father never sees them—she never gets to send them. The power of her testimony is realized only decades later, in peacetime.
- The cost of secrecy. Keeping the drawings hidden means lying to guards and risking discovery. If the NKVD found her sketchbook, Lina would face severe punishment. Her art requires immense courage, but it also endangers her.
- The problem of audience. Lina draws hoping her father will see, but he never does. She writes for an unknown future reader. Her voice is silenced in her own time, a bitter irony that underscores how effectively the Soviets repressed dissent.
- The gray area. Kretzsky, the guard who shows kindness, represents moral ambiguity. Testimony is meant to be clear truth, but Lina’s own story contains shades of gray—she struggles with anger toward her parents and guilt over Andrius’s family. Her art must include these complexities.
Sepetys herself acknowledges in the interview that survivors “survived through love,” not just through art. Art is one tool among many. It does not erase the suffering, but it prevents that suffering from being forgotten.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does Lina decide to leave a “trail of drawings” for her father?
Answer: After visiting an art museum, Lina realizes that her father knows her artistic style intimately. She believes that if she can get her drawings to him, he will recognize her hand and understand that she is alive. This becomes her primary motivation for drawing throughout the deportation—it transforms her art into a secret communication system.
2. How does the improvised ashes drawing differ from Lina’s earlier art, and what does it reveal about her emotional state?
Answer: Earlier, Lina draws with proper charcoal and paper; in the Arctic hut, she uses a bark stick, snow, and ashes to create a gray watercolor. The drawing of two hands pulling apart, marked with a swastika and hammer and sickle, shows her rage at being trapped between two oppressive forces. It also demonstrates her resourcefulness—she refuses to stop making art even when supplies are gone.
3. What is the significance of Lina burying her writings and drawings in 1954?
Answer: After returning from Siberia, Lina is still forbidden to speak about her experiences—doing so could mean re‑arrest. By burying the jar, she ensures that the truth will survive even if she cannot tell it aloud. The burial is an act of faith in the future and a final act of resistance against the Soviet attempt to erase history.
4. In what ways is Lina’s art both powerful and limited as a form of resistance?
Answer: It is powerful because it preserves a record that later reaches the world, proving the deportations happened. It is limited because it cannot protect her or her family in the moment, cannot stop the NKVD, and cannot reach her father while he is alive. Her testimony depends on a future reader—a fragile hope.
5. How does the theme of “art as testimony” connect to the real historical survivors described in the Author’s Note?
Answer: Sepetys writes that real deportees “buried journals and drawings on Baltic soil, risking death if their capsules were discovered by the KGB.” They also “channeled emotion and fear into art and music, the only way they could express themselves.” Lina’s fictional story mirrors these true acts of courage, showing that artistic testimony was a real strategy of survival.