A Gap of sky
Nowadays, young people are exposed to an insane amount of pressure. The expectations are
higher than ever. You have to wear the right clothes, play an instrument, be sporty and have lots
of friends, and on top of all this, get a long education. It is no wonder many young people want to
get away once in a while and try to forget about all the pressure and how they’re going to live up
it. In this short story, a young woman is afraid of not living up to her parents’ and teachers’
expectations, and it has driven her into drug abuse.
Already after reading the first few lines of the short story “A Gap of Sky” by Anna Hope, it can be
categorized as social realistic. The story is about a young woman called Ellie and, like most other
short stories, it begins in medias res .We meet Ellie who is lying in her bed hung over and busted
from yesterdays night of drinking, partying and doing drugs. From the beginning of the story, we
face the hard facts of a young woman who skips school, does drugs and is lost in life. The narrative
technique is based on everyday language with swear words etc., and this brings the story down to
a realistic and rough level. Repetition of Ellie’s thoughts brings us inside her head and draws a
picture of a confused teenager who is controlled by her super ego “she was nineteen, and in
London, and she needed to get some printer ink..” The story is told with a third-person narrator
which gives the reader an insight in Ellie’s thoughts and makes us sympathize with her.
Ellie’s actions (doing drugs and wandering around without proper purpose) gives the reader an
impression of her as feeling abandoned and misunderstood. This may be caused by the fact that
she was forced by her parents to take the course. She didn’t choose herself, “To mom? To dad?
Not them especially not them. It was their fault she was doing this bloody course in the first
place”. This can explain why she lives the sort of lifestyle and has such a hard time pulling herself
together and completing her course. Instead of just writing her essay and getting it over with, she
goes out to party in order to forget about the essay. The next day when she has to do the essay,
she spends all the time looking for ink. All these actions of procrastination are a sign of defeat.
Even though, Ellie keeps reassuring herself that as soon as she gets the ink she will write her essay