Youth is defined as the period of life where one is fluctuating between the immaturity of childhood and the maturity of adulthood. The concept of youth is very broad, but is often characterized by will, imagination, courage, and a yearning to live an adventurous life.
The immense amount of unfulfilled desires epitomises youth, and the disillusion that it could bring. Various situations in life require a certain degree of responsibility, not only self-elected situations, but also situations that you could feel compelled to be a part of. These topics has Anna Hope dealt with in the short story ‘A Gap of Sky’ published in 2008.
Ellie is a 19-year-old teenager centralized in the heart of London. She is a university student, but the fact that she has to do homework frequently, is definitely not something she cherishes. Ellie is a vivacious girl that regularly attends parties with not only liquor involved, but also various drugs, which can be seen in the text:
“Cans, some cans of lager, and then some more coke arriving and – K, didn’t they do some K?”(P.1, l.20)
The short story is a third person narrative with a limited omniscient perspective and takes place in London. At first she wakes up in her flat, then passes through several streets of London; Gower Street, Trafalgar Square, Shaftesbury Avenue, Tottenham Court Road and Russell Square where she stops by a British museum. The author lets the reader into the mind of Ellie, so that the situations are seen from her point of view. This is seen in the very start of the story, where Ellie’s reaction after waking up is written as an immediate thought:
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. Monday, It is Monday. Essay there is an essay due, important, due for Tuesday morning. Virginia Woolf. And the…. what was the title? Something Oyster of Perceptiveness.” (P.1, l.12-16)
This particular quote gives the reader an insight in Ellie’s