A Gap of Sky
“A Gap of Sky” by Anna Hope is a short story about Ellie. A young girl caught in a dilemma between expectations and desires. She is portrait as a young girl who has made many bad mistakes because of her current location, and how a city in reality is a living organism and can influence many people. Ellie easily gets influenced of the city because of a lacking support and care from other people. The story is narrated in a 1. Person from Ellie’s perspective. The narrative technique is very interesting, because the reader only get to see the action from her point of view. This “stream of thoughts” is very confusing, because it describes the situation by every little thought of the persona who in this case is very distractive and unfocused because of ingesting drugs - she changes her focus by the second.
We get introduced to Ellie in the afternoon, she is complete trash as a consequence of a night of heavy drinking. She is a girl who is under a lot of pressure from her parents, because they made her sign in on a course at the UCL in the city. And she has just discovered that if she does not hand in an assignment about Virginia wolf she will flunk and cannot complete the course. And it is due for the next morning. Ellie still is affected of the alcohol and drugs from the night before, and it makes her unfocused. She realizes that she has run out of ink for her printer, and decides to make a run for it in the city. Except that all of the stores are closing or already is. Still under influence of drugs and alcohol, the city becomes a nightmare of obstacles and distractions. The only thing driving her forward is her mission, getting ink for her printer. As she walks alongside with other Londoners, she feels as a moving part of a greater machinery. On her way to the shop, she sees a black leather glove, arranged so that the bar it is sitting on, as if it was flipping people off, raises the middle finger. Ellie starts to get a lot of rebellious thoughts. She just want to say screw it all. She is in London, she is in her prime age and does not have to stand responsible to anyone. That leads to her forgetting the ink and randomly following two men to a museum for no reason at all. The theme of the exhibition is “Living and Dying”. Suddenly Ellie feels that the exhibition is directed personally towards her as if the museum is trying to tell her something, and she thinks that she is going to die. She flees from the museum because she is not ready to deal with death.
The city is described as a living human being, the cars and pedestrians are the blood, flowing in the veins of the body. She keeps quoting philosopher Thomas Hobbes on his view of life ““Nasty, brutish and short”, as a reminder to herself, that it is not too late for her to stay on the course, because she after all, still remembers some of the course. She also realizes that she has let the wilderness of the city take over her life. At this moment, it appears to her how precious and short her life actually is. This is described by her seeing a gap of sky that she has not seen before. She heads for the river, the river works as a crossroad. She has the easy way out, by throwing herself in the river and drown, or go and “wash herself clean”. A man goes into a shop and distracts her and she follows him into the store. This symbolizes her doorway to a better life. Inside the shop, she sees a red jasper stone, which reminds her of the one her mother gave to her. This symbolizes her mother’s protection and care for Ellie, a protection Ellie had just thrown away and taken for granted. The mother appears in front of her and she realizes that she has to find it again, meaning she has to repair her relationship with her mother.
She looks at a great clock, seeing that she still has time to by the ink, as a final nail in the coffin, she can now bury her bad habits and old living manners, and start clean again. The story shows us that you have to have some people around you to help you when you are down. Then you can help them as well when they are in need. The city is a great setting, because it often is described as an urban jungle, which it also is pictured in this short story.