In the book Between Shades Of Grey by Ruta Sepetys the book touches on a lot of different philosophical issues such as love, justice, human nature, etc. One of the biggest issues that the book touches on is human worth and value. In addition human nature and how when you love someone or know someone when something bad happens to them it touches you more, almost like they are worth more to you. For example when Lina, Jonas, and their mother are trying to find their train car that they will be forced into. An officer comes up to them and tries to take Jonas away from Lina and her mom. Her mom and Lina love Jonas with all their heart and bribe the officer with a gold watch to stay together and it works. In the book it says, “Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.” (page 27) So to that horrible officer Jonas was worth a crummy gold watch, but to Jonas’s mom and sister they probably would have given everything to get him back. Another example of this is when Lina, Jonas, and Andrius go to find their fathers in the train cars. Lina and Jonas come back while Andrius is still looking for his father. However Andrius does not come back for hours on end. His mother starts to cry. She thinks that she has lost her only son, and she cries and cries and cries. Lina feels a little bit guilty about letting Andrius go onto all those other train cars by himself but she is not crying. Other people on that train are crying about their own loved ones and are lost in themselves. I think this is important because this really shows us how humans were built and by nature to be the center of their own world. However it shows us the importance of love, empathy, and sympathy for someone else. This is because at the end of the day that officer was ready to take Jonas the officer might have felt a little bit sorry later. However he still would have taken a young boy away from his family. So this shows us the importance of putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes, and stopping for a second on your own actions. Imagine if the officer in that situation thought about how Jonas was feeling and let him go back to his family without a fight. Another example in history is to imagine if during the holacaust some of the Natzi soldiers put themselves in the shoes of the Jewish people, and disobeyed Hitler’s orders. There are so many what ifs, however we can’t change the past but the most important thing is to think about this in our future and to not let history repeat itself. So the next time that you are about to do something, put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and wait a second to say to yourself am I doing what is right?