Module 4: Historical Fiction
Module 4: Historical Fiction
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
Bibliography
Sepetys, Ruta. I Must Betray You. Philomel Books. 2022. ISBN-13: 978-1984836038
Plot Analysis
The story follows Christian, a Romanian who is living in a tyrannical society and communism. He reflects the story in his journal, starting with the day he was called into the front office and ordered to become a spy/informant in exchange of leniency from the law and medical care for his grandfather’s leukemia. The challenge between switching from Christian, a Romanian teenager, and “Oscar,” a spy and informant causes Crisitan to struggle between withholding information so that he can do what’s right versus actually sharing what he sees with Dan Van Dorn. He must try to fool the agents while also trying to stand up against the government and make a difference. Ultimately, he faces a choice in becoming an active protester and advocate for his country. Despite being caught and tortured, he is able to fight until the end and grow into his confident self as an advocate.
Critical Analysis
Something that stood out was that it was great from the POV from students perspective and that it has a sort of flashback format. The opening does a great job in describing the tyranny through the use of a lot of figurative language. Settings described well such as the country’s political situation along with the school and citizen expectations. Another type of figurative language is irony throughout the story of Christian being an informer yet lying to the Securitate that he needs to keep them informed as well as irony that his sister turns out to be the informer herself, not to mention that their grandpa knows they’re both informers before he passes away. Additionally, something great about the book is the exposure to true Romania: its communism, social class, rules, lack of freedom, fear of government, everything that shows what life was like at the time. This book does a good job in depicting such a restricted way of living, starting from the lack of electricity at any moment and the lady whose baby died in the incubator when the government switched off the lights, to foods they can’t eat or drink such as Coca Cola and bananas, to movies they can’t watch such as Western movies, to things they can wear, to being taxed for not having children. Another great thing about the book was how the protagonist writes a letter in retrospect and reflection that helps readers connect through writing even to the last of the book when they finally gain freedom.
Review Excerpt
Kirkus Reviews: A rare look at the youth-led rebellion that toppled Romania’s Ceaușescu.
Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu, with his spiky hair, love of poetry and English, and crush on Liliana Pavel, is as much of a rebel as it’s possible to be in Bucharest, Romania, in 1989. Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu has been in power for 24 years, and most Romanians live in poverty, exporting what they produce to unknowingly fund Ceaușescu’s obscenely extravagant lifestyle. Wild dogs attack children in the streets, and secret agents are everywhere. When an agent confronts Cristian with evidence of treason—a single dollar bill tucked inside his notebook—and also offers medicine for Bunu, his sick grandfather, Cristian agrees to spy on the American diplomat family whose son he’s become friendly with. But as young Romanians gradually become aware that other countries have gained freedom from communism, they rise up in an unconquerable wave. Sepetys brilliantly blends a staggering amount of research with heart, craft, and insight in a way very few writers can. Told from Cristian’s point of view, intercut by secret police memos and Cristian’s own poetry, the novel crackles with energy; Cristian and his friends join the groundswell of young Romanians, combining pragmatism, subterfuge, hope, and daring. While the story ends with joy on Christmas Day, the epilogue recounts the betrayals and losses that follow. The last line will leave readers gasping.
Compulsively readable and brilliant. (maps, photos, author's note, research notes, sources) (Historical fiction. 12-18)
Connections
Some of the major emotions that readers are able to connect to are the feeling of guilt, fear, anger, feeling useless, choosing family vs. breaking rules, siblings and family dynamics, etc. A major part is that students can connect to not having resources and supplies in an overly surveillanced country, which is similar to an underdeveloped country. Students are able to connect to Liliana and Christian’s romantic relationship as teens. They can connect to the friendship with Luca, grieving his grandfather’s death, and scared to be at the hands of a communist government, torture and pain, etc.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Bibliography
Sepetys, Ruta. Between Shades of Gray. Philomel Books. 2011. ISBN-13 : 978-0670920853
Plot Analysis
Right from the beginning of the book, it’s set in the 1940s when a teenage girl Lina and her family gets taken from her home during the night by the NKVD Soviets in Lithuania. Once they pack what little belongings they can, they’re placed in cattle cars and box-like trains where they’re mistreated and dehumanized towards their destination of the camp guided by the NKVD. Once they arrive, she is separated from her dad, as the men are separated from the women and children. Lina and her family are placed in a shack where they are packed and expected to do farmwork. Later, they are taken to another working camp near the North Pole where conditions are freezing and labor is difficult. Throughout these camps, Lina and her brother and mom, along with the other encamped people experience violence, sexual aggression, racism, injuries, pain, and the worst part, the death of her mother. Through the epilogue, we see that thankfully, Lina hung onto hope through her drawings and was able to survive.
Critical Analysis
This book reminded me of Night by Elie Weisel because it encaptures the confusion of a teenager trying to understand the situation happening around them. Something I loved about the book was that it has flashbacks here and there that show the family and cousin dynamics. The book discusses tough topics such as killing themselves with dignity before getting encamped by the “enemy,” having to grow up quickly and being robbed of their childhood, fighting and bargaining for their loved ones’ lives, learning about sacrifice of objects and materialistic items, degrading of the human treatment such as not giving them proper medical attention or a proper restroom for them to use, learning to ration food. Bottom line is that the book does a painfully beautiful job in showing the struggle to survive with death, pain, and suffering.
Review Excerpt
Goodreads: Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
Connections
Some of the biggest connections that teen readers can make with this book is the change of environment and entire life in only a matter of minutes/hours, especially immigrants. Another great connection is the use of role models through her mom and the librarian. I loved the part where the librarian was reading to them and helping them forget their environment in the cattle carts. Another connection is to drawing; Lena loves to draw and uses it as a connection and expression of emotions. Lastly, some of the emotions teens can connect to are yearning for your father for protection and help, sexual assault against women, especially deportees, friendship and crushing on a teen boy during such a terrible time, and ultimately, risking their lives to try to still be brave and united with their loved ones.
Boston Jane: An Adventure by Jennifer L. Holm
Bibliography
Holm, Jennifer L. Boston Jane: An Adventure. Harper Collins. 2001. ISBN-13: 978-0375862045
Plot Analysis
Jane, who is not the typical 11 year old girly girl in the community due to growing up with only her father after her mother’s death, decides through some encouragement from William Baldt that she needs to go to school of manners so that she is “respectable enough” for her dad to remarry. She struggles being herself, acting how she wants, and instead she tries being and acting the way young ladies are expected to behave and speak. When William asks her to marry her through a letter, her dad disagrees at first, but then decides to let her go away to marry him. She faces some challenges on her voyage to meet her husband, such as the death of her friend Mary and trying to adapt and adjust to being near the “savages.'' However, once she arrives she realizes that William is not there and is on a government trip in the north. She tries sending out for him to search for him, but while she waits for word of him, she begins learning the ways of living in the cabins and countryside along with the other characters like Jehu, Mr. Russell, Handsome Jim, Mr. Swan, and Father Joseph, etc. When she realizes William isn’t the perfect man she thought he was and marries a half Indian half white woman for the land and is a racist, she realizes she should’ve followed her heart rather than focusing on what others wanted from her. Throughout the adventures and challenges, Jane undergoes character development and learns to be herself rather than only following others’ expectations.
Critical Analysis
The setting is well described through historical Philadelphia in the 1840s and 1850s. The description of the ship, teen life during the time period, the expectations of a teenage girl such as their behavior and actions such as not running, looking clean, not spitting, speak in low tones, never laugh out loud, please others around you cheerfully, etc. are greatly described in detail. I also loved the topics presented in the book such as a father who encourages her to “think” and discuss things about life and read, the insights of medicine and health life in the 1800s such as yellow fever, remedies they used for rat bites and nausea, etc. A great aspect of this book is speaking in past tense, reflection on past events, journal type entry, and a style of chronological events. And lastly, a very important topic was tackled in this book which is being yourself and finding your own identity as a teenage girl.
Review Excerpt
Kirkus Reviews: It’s etiquette versus exigency in 19th-century Washington Territory. Jane Peck wasn’t always a lady; until the age of 11, she was the very picture of a hoyden, terrorizing the neighborhood with rotten apples and manure pats. But prodded by the censure of the ladylike Sally Biddle, and with the encouragement of her physician father’s apprentice, William of the dazzling smile, she enrolls in Miss Hepplewhite’s Young Ladies Academy. In the space of four years, she goes from being an independent and opinionated, if messy, girl to a very proper young lady, much to the dismay of her independent and opinionated Papa. But when she sails from Philadelphia to Shoalwater Bay to join William, she finds that he has gone, and she must make a place for herself among rough mountain men and the Chinook Indians, none of whom give a hoot for the accomplishments of a young lady. Holm (Our Only May Amelia, 1999) gives readers an original, likable narrator in Jane and a good-humored, rip-roaring romantic adventure, with colorful secondary characters to spare. These include Mr. James Swan, who left his family in Boston to pursue anthropological study (an actual historical figure), and the blue-eyed Jehu, the sailor who encourages Jane to revise her notion of proper young ladyhood. A couple of subplots are left hanging or seem out of place: the obvious decline in Jane’s father’s health goes unresolved, and the introduction of the ghost of Jane’s traveling companion does little to further the plot. An unfortunately young-looking cover illustration will limit the usefulness of this otherwise highly enjoyable historical romp. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-14)
Connections
Some of the most important connections made here are a unique and loving father-daughter relationship, the lack of a mother, playing games with kids in the village such as spitting, running around, throwing apples at trees, a teen who thinks everything that goes wrong is because she has bad luck in her life, and something not always addressed which is girls growing up with their “christian duty” and what’s expected of her. There is the topic of bullying or bickering with other girls, struggles of identity in teens, self comparison to other teen girls, having a crush on someone, wanting to marry, tying your whole woman identity to a man and marriage, role model of a father, death of her friend, Mary. Each of these major topics are great connection points that reveal to readers a sort of understanding and relation to the book and its characters. Speaking of characters, it was great that the book involved character identity and learning to be yourself rather than only following others’ expectations, ultimately leading her to learn to make her own life decisions.
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