...English essay – “A Gap of Sky” Amalie Thomsen Introduction: The title of the short story is “A Gap of Sky” and is written by Anna Hope in 2008. Anna Hope is an English actress and writer. She is from Manchester and was educated at Wadham College, Oxford. The short story is fiction, but could still take place in real life. The main theme is identity formation. Analysis: The story is written with a 3rd persons view: “Ellie reaches a hand out […] She takes the glass, stumbles forward…” The narrator therefor has an omniscient point of view, and knows everything about the main character, Ellie. Characters: In the story we have the main character, Ellie, her friend Toby (who we do not meet, but hear about) and the mother (we do not meet her either). Ellie: The main character, Ellie, is 19 years old: She is only nineteen […], and lives in London: […] this part of London. She is a very unhealthy and sloppy teenager. She has smoked a lot of pot, which her health condition clearly shows: The air is cold, makes her gasp, cold and hurting on her ragged lungs. She a type of person who postpones many of her things: She’s got to get this essay in. […] They won’t close till sixish. It will all be fine. Ellie is a complex character because a part of her develops and she becomes more grown up. At first she has a very difficult relationship with her mother, but after seeing a little stone, she suddenly realizes that she has not been fair to her. The setting (FOCUS) The setting...
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...Write an essay (900-1200 words) in which you analyse and interpret Anna Hope's short story "A Gap of Sky". A part of your essay must focus on narrative technique and the importance of the city setting. A Gab of Sky - essay To be young is the greatest thing on earth, especially when you have a lot of friends, do well in school, and remember to relax and enjoy life. In this short story Anna Hope tells us about a young girl, Ellie. She takes pleasure in life by using drugs in her everyday life. Ellie is a girl who was sent to college by her parents, nothing she really wanted, but something she had to. She dosen’t like being there, and she has the thought of running away, but something inside her tells her to stay. We are told that the night before she went to a party where she got very drunk and took a lot of drugs. She thinks the night through and she kind a remembers it all, however, she was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Suddenly she recalls that she have to make an essay and have to print it out, but she dosen’t have any ink, and therefore she have to run out to get some. Ellie is a nineteen year old teenager who lives in the heart of London, where her college is. Apparently she lives at the college and not at home with her parents. Ellie blame her parents for her being there, and she even calls it “this bloody course”. She stays up late and party, smoke crack pipe and do drugs. She dosen’t take her course serious and she really just want to hang out with...
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...A Gap of sky The short story “A Gap of sky”, by Anna Hope, is about how youth often is characterized by life, desire and a feeling of freedom and invincibility. The setting is in today’s London and the author starts in medias res “It is dark, but the wrong dark. Something is wrong with the dark” (l.1). Because of this the author establishes, by his use of words such as not just dark but the wrong dark, a rather gloomy mood. The story is about how being young and, although freedom is within reach, responsibility and expectations are right behind you, reminding you of reality. The youth is a vital part of your life providing background for what the personality of the person concerned ends up to be. Every person has different ways of looking at freedom. Some people like to take a run in the nature, open their minds and others do drugs to escape from reality. In “A Gap of Sky” the girl called Ellie deals with the issues of drugs, freedom and responsibility. She does a lot of coke and seems to be addicted and needs it so she can write her essay. “and then more coke arriving”(l.20) “Coke. Does she have any left? … Yesssss! Clever Ellie. Little bump just to get things started.” (l.30-33). Ellie also likes to party and the night before seemed to be pretty rough with booze, smoking crack pipe, taking drugs and ending up with some bruises. “rests her swollen cheek against her palm” (l.3) “her chest hurts.”(l.11) In the morning of this wild night, she wakes up and realizes that she...
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...A Gap of Sky -by Anna Hope It is in the youth you construct your final identity. This can be very hard to handle for some youngsters. It's important to find a balance between the society's and family's expectations and your own hunger for freedom and dislodgement. This short story by Anna Hope is about Ellie, a nineteen-year-old girl who lives in London by herself. She is addicted to drugs, especially coke, but at the same time she is studying at the university. Her life is sort of dual which leads to problems – it's difficult for her to take care of her studies in the daytime and at same partying the entire night and be a drug addict. We only follow her life about an hour, where she has to buy ink to her printer, but still she is able to go through the entire range of emotions – fear of death, rebelliousness, joy, dejectedness, freedom and so on. The story begins in medias res with the sentence: “It is dark, but the wrong dark. Something is wrong with the dark.” This creates a very gloomy atmosphere right from the beginning. The description of her waking up with swollen cheeks, drinking water from a pint glass, peeing in the sink etc. gives the impression of a person who is out of her depth and living on the edge. It's plain that she lives a very unhealthy life – she has inflammation of her eyes and her chest is hurting. She only remembers glimpses from the night before, which indicates that she has been very affected by drugs and alcohol, and it appears that it's...
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...A Gap of Sky In life there's many obstacles to overcome. The difficult transition from childhood to adulthood brings along some of these obstacles and it's often young people who make the wrong choices when choosing how to live their lives. Being young is more or less about providing a background for your personality and that's why the youth is such a vital part of life. But being young is not always as easy as it sounds. Even though freedom is within reach, responsibility and expectations are breathing young people in the neck reminding you of the pressure that comes with it. Instead of choosing the right path that brings them the best, more and more young people feel a massive pressure when undergoing the transition from child to adult. This pressure often result in frequent use of drugs and alcohol to escape from the harsh reality.This is the case in the short story “A Gap of Sky” by Anna Hope from 2008 that deals with the issues of drugs, freedom and pressure. The story is set in todays London and starts in medias res when the story's main character, Ellie, wakes up. Ellie seems tired, worn out from last night and you understand that she has a hard time getting out of bed. The first sentence describe the darkness around her: “It is dark, but the wrong dark. Something is wrong with the dark” (p. 1, l. 1) Her room is probably dark because the curtains block the sunlight. The wrong dark may symbolize Ellie's state of mind. Her unconsciousness tells her that something is...
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...A Gap of Sky Fuck! Fuck is a word which is used a lot among young people. Especially when talking about your life. Fuck it! School can wait, let’s party tonight! But it isn’t always that easy not to care. Life isn’t a walkover. It can be pretty tough sometimes because what is right and what is wrong? – This is the question! Sometimes you end up confused and lost, as an outcome of too many bad decisions and too little guidance and support. But what is a bad decision and how do you figure it out? Sometimes all you need is a little something that will show you the answer – Motivation leads you to the right thing to do! This is some of the Topics that we are dealing with in the short story called A Gap of Sky. A Gap of Sky is a short story written by Anna Hope and published in 2008. It is about a 19-year-old girl struggling against the inner voice of her, which is telling her to cut out her studies and have fun instead. By having fun I mean drinking and doing drugs. Because that’s what Ellie is good at. She has been sent to London by her parents to study, but she is not taking it as serious as her parents are expecting of her to do, because she has been partying all night and can’t remember much. She wakes up and starts stressing because of an essay that she has to write, about Virginia Woolf. But she needs printer ink, so she goes out into the world searching for printer ink. On her way searching for printer ink she experiences a lot. The 19-year-old Ellie is the main character...
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...A Gap of Sky We all know that partying and hanging out with friends is more fun than studying and doing homework. That is a part of youth. It is not always easy to be young. Sometimes you escape the reality by taking drugs or alcohol and end up unsuccessful. Nowadays young people have to think about their own life and school to become successful and not be distracted by their surroundings. Last but not least, not to be afraid to failure in life because anything is possible if you want to do the effort it takes. This is the case of Ellie in the short story “A Gap of Sky” written by Anna Hope. The short story takes place in London. She lives in the epicenter in a modern society. It symbolizes a city of noise, filled opportunities, and people. This is an urban environment which affects her daily life. In the city there are plenty of places to get drugs and go to a nightclub or something like that. As described on (P. 2 l. 57-58): “There are people moving together, here in this part of London, moving with purpose, with meaning and Ellie is one of them.” With that she means that life in London and the big city is very intense and especially fast moving; there is no room for being lost in this environment. Ellie knows all about the behavior in the city, and all the street-names and buildings. But it is also a dangerous environment as we read on (P. 3 l. 90-91): “She dodges her way through the traffic, clotted like blood in the arteries nearing the heart of the city”. It is like...
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...Essay - A Gap of Sky Everyone knows the feeling of realizing when we take things for granted. It does not matter whether it is persons, pleasures or love because it hurts a bit inside anyway. You wonder if it is too late to make it up, but it should never be too late. Ellie becomes aware of her problem and at last, she knows that she has done a good thing and the right thing to do as well. Ellie is a wild teenager who wants to live life a little extreme. By the word extreme is meant that she party much, does not care much for school and she uses coke. Ellie develops throughout the story from being a nineteen-year-old drug abuser, who wanders around in her own small world in which it is all about drugs and she does not see the world or the people around her. In the store, she focuses her thoughts on the stone and her mother. She realizes that she has taken love and life for granted and how ungrateful and foolish that is. It is the point of no return, Ellie wakes up and start thinking about life and it values. She opens her eyes to the world she is living in. She becomes aware of the people, their love and the bonds of love between everyone. The feeling of being alive gives Ellie an ecstasy, which clearly is better than the intoxication of drugs. Her name means shining light or beautiful woman and it seems suitable because of her improvement. Ellie walks around London city as she goes for printer ink and the other errands. She does not tell us much about where she is...
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...A Gap of Sky “A Gap of Sky” by Anna Hope is a short story about a young girl named Ellie who is constantly on drugs. She is a student in London, and from the story we can tell that she is tired of education and lacking freedom so she goes against this by doing drugs. The story describes how someone can lose control of themselves when they are alone in a city, with no one to turn to for support. The story is told by a third person narrator, but the way that the story is written makes it seem like Ellie, the main character, is telling the story. The writer shows Ellie’s thoughts very clearly through the narrator using very casual language and different sentence structures to get inside Ellie’s head and describing everything in a way that shows she is very distracted. It is like a running view of what is inside her head and helps us understand that she is on drugs. We are almost reading her thoughts and are witnessing her search for freedom, a theme in the story. The type of writing used in this story may seem like it is messy and unfocused, but it is actually very effective in showing the reader what it is like in Ellie’s head as her thoughts and actions are blended together and told by the narrator - “She’s going to have to work through the night, but it’s fine.” Here, we see her thoughts about having to work on an essay. She is also extremely distracted and constantly changes her mind and thoughts. After thinking it would be “fine” to work on the essay, she thinks back to...
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...Analysis and interpretation of “A gap of sky” by Anna Hope “A Gap of Sky” is a short story by Anna Hope. The story is about the young girl Ellie who lives in London and attend UCL. She lives a wild life with parties and drugs and therefore she cannot concentrate on her studies. She has not got anyone to hold on to and no parents to guide her. The city distracts her with all its options and temptations. There is always new and exciting things around the corner but you must focus on the important things and not choose to follow all your impulses – life is too short for that. The main themes in the story are developing and identity. Ellie finds out that it is important to keep up on her studies and take care of her body, by staying clean of drugs. Ellie is the main character in the story. She attends University College London, but she does not take her studies very serious. The text says: “It was their fault she was doing this bloody course in the first place.” So it seems like her parents have forced her to go there. She does not care much about her education. She is very close to expulsion. “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.” She most likely skips classes and papers and parties instead. In the beginning she wakes up after a party. It is Monday afternoon which means that she had been partying all Sunday night. She cannot remember last night clearly because...
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...A Gap of Sky “A Gap of Sky” is a short story written by Anna Hope. This short story is about a girl named Ellie whose mind is depending on the setting in the story. As the setting changes, Ellie’s mind changes too. The narrator follows Ellie’s thoughts, reflections, actions and observations, which make her seem more reliable and honest with the readers. The narrator of the short story is a third person narrator. Even though the narrator is a third person narrator the readers are still a part of Ellie’s thoughts and her point of view, which is clear because the language of the text is predominately influenced by a vocabulary of a teenage girl. This is clear, because Ellie swears a lot, and she has a teenage way of looking at things. This is clear when the narrator says: “Coffee plunged, poured, slurped; hot, fuck that’s hot. Anything else? Of course: printer, printer’s out of ink. Student shop too. Fine. Time? Ten minutes to get there. Shit.” (Line 35 – 36) This shows how the narrator makes Ellie a stereotypical teenager; she would rather party with her friends than stay committed to her schoolwork and the adults’ expectations from her. Ellie’s mind guides the readers through the events of the story, and it is shown to the readers through her point of view. It is written with a technique called stream of consciousness, which makes the narrator more associated throughout the story. It is clear that the narrator follows Ellie’s consciousness, because the narrator uses words...
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...A Gap of Sky The short story A Gap of Sky is written by Anna Hope in 2008. It is about youth and everything that comes with it, such as school, high expectations and drugs. It is about a young student called Ellie, who lives in London. She has a paper due the next day which she has not started on because she was out partying and doing drugs the night before. She goes for a walk in the heart of London to clear her head and figure out what she is supposed to do with her life. Ellie is nineteen years old and is a student at a university in London. It seems that she is living in a dorm on campus, since she describes how she has to walk down a hall to get to the bathroom. Ellie is no taking her education seriously. She has gotten a warning from the university saying that if she does not start taking school seriously, she will be kicked out. Therefore it is very important that she hands in her essay, which she has not started on yet, and is due the next day. Ellie is very stressed out and she escapes from it all by taking drugs and going to parties. Instead of taking responsibility for her actions and choices, she blames her parents. “It was their fault she was doing this bloody course in the first place.(p. 2, l. 65-66)”. When Ellie stops at Russell Square, she sees a glove on a spike, and this brings out a feeling of freedom and hope in her. She feels completely free and instead of continuing to look for a printer shop, she enters the British Museum. Later she stops at a shop...
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...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...
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...A Gap of Sky In ”A Gap of Sky” by Anna Hope we meet the young woman Ellie, a complicated girl, with some very serious problems. First of all her life is very affected by her serious use of drugs and the consequences of this use the following days. Her lifestyle is far from normal and very extreme, since we are able to interpret this after only one afternoon in her company. Unfortunately, this day is quite important, since she has to finish a hand-in for the next day, or else she will be kicked out of the course. We follow her through London on her quest for coke and ink, getting an insight in her everyday life. The story is written in a stream-of-consciousness with an omniscient third person narrator. This stream-of-consciousness gives us the impression that Ellie is under the influence of drugs meanwhile we follow her, which is not that strange since it seems that she took a lot of different drugs the night before. The narrator and the stream-of-consciousness give us a great insight in her feelings both physically and mentally which is very important for understanding the story, but also it excludes us from having an insight in her background and upbringing since she does not give us an outline of her earlier life and her family. We are “only” allowed access to her mind, and not her entire story. This suits well with the in medias res beginning of the story, which is also affected by the stream-of-consciousness. “.....Cans, some cans of lager, and then more coke arriving...
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...A Gap of Sky Youth is often associated with freedom, exploration, desire, and choices which concern the future of the individual. Being young is not always easy. The parents are now in the background and, therefore, young people enjoy the freedom which comes with the parents’ withdrawal. Although, having fun and being free is part of youth, there are responsibilities and expectations, and these must not be neglected. But real freedom and responsibilities go together. The short story ‘A Gap of Sky’ by Anna Hope deals with issues which may be associated with being young in a big city trapped in an environment where drugs and “freedom” without responsibility are part of everyday life. The main character, Ellie, wakes up on a Monday afternoon realizing that she has to write an essay for the next day. She has been out all night, high on drugs and alcohol, and she is close to being kicked out of the university that she attends. In the short story Ellie goes through a mental journey, and the outcome of this is a new Ellie who doesn’t take everything for granted, and she realizes that life has so much to give her if she gives something back. Ellie is 19 years old and lives in the heart of London. She might live at a college as she has to walk down a corridor to get to the toilet. She studies at a university even though she doesn’t take it seriously. It was her parents who made her attend, and she has already had an extension. She doesn’t do her schoolwork and the past...
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