A Gap of Sky by Anna Hope free essay sample

The story is told with a consciousness technique that illustrates Ellie’s way of thinking. Her thoughts are full of swearwords, rhetorical questions and incoherence for example: â€Å"Fuck† , â€Å"Jesus† and â€Å"What really, was there to be reverent to? To whom? To what? To why? To God? To Mum? To Dad? † . This gives us an idea of how Ellie speaks, and how she is when she is doing drugs. Because her language is completely different in the end of the story. The way Anna Hope’s writing style is when she is on drugs is more jumpy than when she is clean: â€Å"Nice, now. Coffee. Swill out cafetiere, fill it. Computer. Is On. Fags†¦ Student shop. She could always score some more, too; see if Jez is about. Good plan [†¦] Anything else? Of course: printer, printer’s out of ink† . This makes the reader really confused about what she is actually talking about. We will write a custom essay sample on A Gap of Sky by Anna Hope or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Ellie is a nineteen-year-old girl living in London city. The story starts out with her waking up at 16:29 to the â€Å"wrong dark†, by this she means that the sun is going down, instead going up – It is Monday, not Sunday. She remembers that she’s got an essay due for Tuesday morning, and starts to panic. First she is surprised about sleeping so long, but then she remembers what she did Saturday evening. She remembers drinking, taking K and doing coke. She gets back to the thought of the essay, and it reminds her that she ran out of ink. Here the story really begins, and she starts her adventure though the streets of London. The city setting and the descriptions of Ellie’s walk through London’s streets plays an important role in the short story, as a reader you can actually, follow her on a map, because of Anna Hope’s precise description of the city. But Ellie makes it difficult, because she is following every person she sees. Ellie’s thoughts are moving with her on the walk around London. Her mind thinks of a different subject every time she is someplace new. â€Å"The glove was a sign, for sure it was a sign; she was nineteen, and in London, and she needed to get some printer ink before the shop closed, and she should write an essay, but really, she was free† This is where her mind starts wandering. She is walking around and she starts to think about freedom, and that she is completely free. She persuades herself into going to the British Museum, just because she hasn’t been there before. She suddenly feels a horrible throbbing in her head, which is most likely because of the drugs from last night. She notices a plaque with the saying â€Å"Living and dying† and suddenly her mind is a different place again. She thinks about dying and becomes afraid: â€Å"Ellie doesn’t want to go to a shop now, couldn’t go into a shop now, doesn’t want any bloody ink, can’t write an essay, no matter what, no matter what it matters, doesn’t want any more coke, ever again† When she comes into a shop that offers stones with protective force, she remembers that her mother once gave her a stone like that. It makes her think about her mother’s love which she has always taken for granted: â€Å"[The stone was] an expression of something, of her mother, of her love, and Ellie had just shoved it away, taken it for granted† . Ellie thinks about all the impressions of the afternoon and gets a feeling of an omnipresent love that loops between everyone she meets, â€Å"It is filled with people, and everyone, everyone Ellie sees has the same substance within them, around them, connecting them, looping between them in great bonds of love† . Ellie knows that she is free to do whatever she likes, and even though, she choses to honor her Mother, and give her back, what she have given to her. 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. † After this Ellie becomes more and more attentive to the city. She suddenly gets a feeling of love going out from all the people surrounding her. The short story is called â€Å"A Gap of Sky† and this is exactly what Ellie gets. At one place in the city, there is an opening to the sky, and Ellie is able to see the sky in a place she has never seen it befor e. Figuratively speaking, this means that she is able to see into something greater than she was before. â€Å"She turns left, onto Shaftesbury Avenue, and as she turns there is a gap of sky to her right, an emptiness, a vacancy that she doesn’t remember seeing before, something destroyed, or being built† . Throughout this story, Ellie is facing a whole bunch of meaningful questions about life, death, freedom and love, which is teaching her to choose the right thing. She choses to write the essay and not to be kicked out of college, and she choses her future.