Salt to the Sea is a great novel with ideas that can be related to today and events that occurred in World War Two. The book is told from four perspectives. Each person is also hunted and haunted by a different thing. Emilia is hunted by shame. Joana is hunted by guilt. Florian is hunted by fate. Alfred is hunted by fear. As said by a solider "'....I'd rather be at the front, killing Russians, but I destroyed my knee, so I'm here'-he looked at me-'with guy like you.'" (Sepetys 145). This shows how Alfred must be very fearful not to join the war effort but to assist with a ship instead and work with the injured. During the story the three of the characters meet up and head off with their group to safety from the war. Florian and Emilia would be in trouble if they're true identity is discovered by the Nazis and Joana as well for helping the two. All of them would be in trouble if found by the Soviets. Therefor, they move and try not to be caught, which with often encounters makes everyone nervous. They finally make it to a port in Gotenhafen and the four finally meet. They load and there's another near encounter with a Nazi almost on to Florian. They all board the Wilhelm Gustloff. On board, the Polish girl gives birth to a girl. Throughout the novel she claimed it's father is August, a guy she liked at the cottage. She admits that it was really a Russian whose August's mother surrendered her to them. She doesn't look at her baby for a while. Shameful for it. Joana still feels guilty for leaving her family. Alfred is just a sailor who isn't fit enough to serve the German army and is too fearful to join. Florian is still has fate on his tail, as a solider contacts his former boss who he left, and is now forced to hide. Then, Florian's fate triggers it all. The Gustloff is hit by 3 torpedoes by a Soviet submarine and it begins to sink. Emilia starts to lose her shame and looks at her baby and rushes to help it. The characters run to the lifeboats. Emilia gives Florian her baby who she names Halinka on one of the lifeboats. After a few more passengers rush to the lifeboat, Emilia pushes the wandering boy onto the lifeboat and it left. She has lost her shame and believes in her child more than herself, sacrificing herself. She and Alfred scramble trying to find another lifeboat or a raft as Joana, Florian, the wandering boy, Halinka and others on the lifeboat drift off. Alfred and Emilia find a raft that they ride off just before the ship sinks, which ends up killing more than 9,000 people with it. As Alfred rambles on about the girl he's obsessed with, Emilia realizes there's almost no way they were going to make it, and she starts to lose it. She says something in Polish and Alfred recognizes it. He was fearful but now conquered it and tried to kill Emilia. He jumps up and stomps hard on the ground in which he slips and lands hard on metal. He becomes very hurt and Emilia tries to stable him, in which he jumps back to his death in the cold Baltic Sea. Meanwhile, Florian's horrible fate started to work in his favor. A ship came by and picked up his lifeboat. As they climb the rope to the ship, Joana slips and accidentally kicks Florian into the sea. She quickly catches on and gets in the boat. When Florian was in the sea, he heard a voice say "'Kick! Kick your feet!' She was yelling to me." (Sepetys 366). He came up to the boat thanking Joana for the advice but she wasn't the one yelling. Florian's horrible fate had gone in his favor, conquered. Joana in the boat seeing that she had saved a lot of people nursing and got out of a horrible situation was no longer haunted by guilt. Emilia appeared to have hallucinated and seen her mom a home with her daughter. The novel ends with a letter from Clara Christensen. She sends it to Florian talking about how an American girl named Halinka wanted to compete in the summer games but her nationality was unknown because she was born on a ship. They knew nothing about her mother except that she was Polish and her name was Emilia. The letter also mentions that Emilia's body had washed up on Christensen's backyard and Florian's pack and Emilia were buried. It ends on knowing that in Florian's notebook he described Emilia is a savior and Christensen felt the same despite never knowing her. The most valuable idea from the book is no matter how bad your situation is, you can still conquer things that haunt you. The book matters because it lets people see and inspires them, especially those who are feeling really bad about their life and are considering very bad things, that even though you might be going through a hard time being haunted by a problem, you can get over it. This might help people who think very poorly about themselves for having issues to reconsider it. The takeaway message is that you should persist and continue going on and you can and will conquer your biggest problems. This book is valuable today as it shows that people dealt with their problems as they were dying in a war and if they can do that so can anyone in today's world. Overall, Salt to the Sea is a very good book that could even potentially save someone's life by putting things in perspective.
1 Comment
Abby
5/12/2017 11:15:33 am
This sounds interesting, why do you think the author ended the book the way she did?
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