A Gap of Sky

A Gap of Sky The short story written by Anna Hope is about a girl called Ellie. Her life is a typical dysphoric student’s chaos, dominated by drugs, anticipant parents and a distracting identity crisis. There are several themes that concern the story, and I shall now review some of them. As my aforementioned statement points out, identity crisis is an essential issue throughout the story. Her mind lies in a dilemma between either to follow her desires, or the expectations which are upon her. She doesn’t know whether to succumb to the temptation of the drugs and partying, or to complete her course and score high grades for the good of her mom and dad. Other themes which could cover a Gap of Sky would be issues like expectations, responsibility, drugs, youth and pressure. The narrator is using the “stream of consciousness” technique throughout most of the story, which is very similar to similar to Virginia Woolf’s writing manner. It gives the reader a slightly confusing and unfocused interpretation, though it also manages to pull the reader into the main character’s mind. In spite of the fact that you may easily feel; that the narrator is Ellie herself, it is actually a third person omniscient narrator. The language of the text is highly influenced by slang, and has a typical “youngster” stereotypical use. The story begins in an “in medias res” and follows a linearly progression. It has its turning point when Ellie begins her adventure of finding ink, by walking out of her door.
There is also a use of similes, metaphors and symbols. Especially the similes are visible - for example in line 49 “(...) and it feels like sludge, like thick dark sludge”, and line 83 “(...) and her skull feels as though it might split open”. The metaphors aren’t particularly prominent in the text, but these, plus the similes, make you get a more figurative interpretation, than if there weren’t any. The last rhetorical device used in the text, that I shall go into, is the