A Gap of Sky
What is the meaning of life? What is the right thing to do, and what is wrong? Is this education really what I want, or what my parents want? What do I want?
Many questions are asked, but no one knows the answer to them.
Through the short story “A Gap of Sky” a young girl on the influence of drugs, is looking for printer ink for her essay. On one side she wants to just keep being under the influence of drugs, party all night and have fun with her friends, but on the other hand she wants something to do with her life, she wants an education. One day she sees a gap in the sky. What does it symbolise? Is this a new start?

The story “A Gap of Sky”, by Anna Hope is a wake up call for young people.
Waking up still influent by drugs after eight hours of sleep Ellie shoots up from under the duvet. She has an essay due for Tuesday, and the only thing she is missing is printer ink.
“She remembers the letter, the stomach-lurching letter: If this lack of application continues we will have no choice but to reconsider your place on the course.” Apparently Ellie does not care about the school. She is a naive and young woman, and she wants to decide for herself.
“She needs to get some printer ink, if she’s going to do the this essay. And if not? Will they really kick her off the course? … She thinks of this past year, of university, and it feels like sludge, like thick dark sludge in her brain… No way. She’s got to get this essay in.” Although she has done some stupid things at the university, she is determined to make this essay so she will not get kicked out of the university.
But on the other hand she can turn to be foolish and indifferent again. “It will be fine. There will be time for everything: time to get ink, to get cigarettes; maybe even to get a bit more coke.” Her interest changes all the time, from being foolish to being rational, and then being foolish again. Perhaps it is the coke, cause she is still on the influence of drugs. She can’t decide what she wants do to. Still on the influence of coke, she describes how she feels. When you read the story it is like you can feel the same things as she can.
You hear all her thoughts and all her feelings, which is described down to small details.
“The pain is intensifying; feels as though it is in that place where the drugs have gone, snorted up and into her brain.”

“At Russell Square she stops, leans against an iron railing. … Her eye runs down the rail, where her gaze stops on an object… She walks slowly towards it. It is a glove … its middle finger raised up to the sky in glorious salute… She touches the middle finger. A volt of naughtiness passes trough her. Life seems, suddenly, filled with possibility, with giddy possibility, with irreverence, with delight, for what, really, was there to be reverent to? … To Mum? To Dad? Not them especially not them. It was their fault she was doing this bloody course in the first place. The glove was a sign… but really she was free.”
This is the point where she can do the right thing or the wrong.
”A Gap of sky, to her right, an emptiness, a vacancy that she doesn’t remember seeing before. ”
Its like all her problems get thrown away when she sees the gap. It is like a light at the end of the tunnel. She ”realises this is something she can do”.
After she sees the glove as a sign to look up at the sky, it makes her thoughts go in a total different direction than the thoughts earlier.
She now realizes she can do this essay, not getting kicked out of the university and she can get an education. This essay is so important for her future, and she has to do this essay to stay at the university.

She comes to this store and sees these small stones. She takes one and holds it in her palm. Weightless and deep orange-red coloured. This was the same stone Ellie’s mother gave her when she went away with Rob. This stone was given to Ellie to protect her.
”Whatever, it was still an expression of something, a distilled expression of something, of her mother, of her love, and Ellie had just shoved it away taken it for granted.”
She realizes her mother wanted her the best, no matter which ideas Ellie might get.
“Ellie turns this picture of her mother round in her head … Ellie conjures her mother before her and says her name and in saying it she honours it and gives it back to her. Realises this is something she can do.”
She now feels so much more alive, and she now has her mind at the right place. Her mother will always be there for her when she has her protection-stone she got from her. The stone will lead her the right way.

Going through London described by the vision of Ellie, it sounds very messy, just like her head. She can’t get her mind straight and come to a conclusion.

Through the story she has a choice, on one hand she can just keep doing having fun with her friends and keep doing drugs. But on the other hand, she can be rational and get an education.
At the end of the story “She will write her essay and that will be a good thing. A good thing and the right thing to do.” She has seen what the right things to do are to make her essay so she can move on at university and get her education.
She can choose to be a naive young woman who wants to decide for her. Or be the rational young woman who wants an education, and knowing that her parents wants the best for her, and that is why they have put her at the university.