The decadence of a human being is not a beautiful sight to see, especially if it is one of your own loved ones. The question usually asked in this matter is, how can I help him/her? You can certainly be supportive the person if it is something hard for him/her to overdue, but if they are declining their own state of mind, it is up to the person who has the problem to confront it and overcome it. This is one of the topics dealt with in Anna Hopes short-story “A Gap of Sky” from 2008, where a teenager named Ellie struggle against her inner demons.
The story is set in today’s London; the author starts in medias res with the line “It is dark, but the wrong dark. Something is wrong with the dark” and therefore the author also establish by his use of words such as dark, and it not just dark it is a wrong dark, a rather gloomy mood. We are quickly introduced to the short-story’s protagonist, Ellie, a 19-years old girl who attends University College London. Our first impression of Ellie is a slightly obscene one, she wakes up after a party, she barely remembers what she did the night before, other than some drugs, and it was certainly not harmless marihuana, it was die hard drugs such as cocaine, so she is a ruthless teenager, a rebel one might say, but still not definite stupid since she does attend University College London, but what she really needs is a little stability in her life. Ellie looks at her cell phone and realises how late it is, and that is terrible news to her, since she has an essay due for tomorrow on Virginia Woolf’s Oyster of Perceptiveness. The terrible news lies in the fact, that if she does not finish it in time, she will be thrown off the course, this is another example of that Ellie desperately needs some steadiness in her life. The whole short-story is told from a third person narrator limited to the view of Ellie, but there are examples of an intrusive narrator who comments on how people are walking around with purpose and meaning, and how Ellie is one of them. “There are people moving together, here in this part of London, moving with purpose, with meaning, and Ellie is one of them.”
Ellie has everything she needs, except printer ink (stability and meaning) and therefore she decides to go out and buy some. The first shop, sadly for her, does not have open, and she therefore decides to go to Tottenham Court Road to buy the ink, but she stops at Russell Square where she leans against an iron railing. The iron railing supports her, and hence it becomes a symbol of the support and stability she needs in her everyday life, but there is a glove, a black leather glove on the end of the railing which she is drawn to, and then she decides to walk towards it and therefore not leaning against the iron railing anymore, and thus it is preventing her from achieving the stability she needs.
The black leather glove is therefore Ellie’s, one might say dark side, but she misinterprets the glove as a symbol of giving the finger to authority (since the middle finger on the glove is raised), and to the system. “A volt of naughtiness passes through her” , and the quote certainly tells us that she is a perverted girl. So Ellie decides to say “fuck” to Virginia Woolf and instead she follows two South American-looking men, through the back entrance to the British museum, after all she’s never been in there before, so why not? But as soon as she treads inside she is punished by a higher power, because of her misinterpretation of the glove, she suddenly becomes aware of a “throbbing in her skull. A horrible throbbing, metallic and insistent and wrong” , and the pain is so intensive that she believes that she is going to die. She hurries away and at this point the author depicts the city scene rather vulgarly “she dodges her way through the traffic, clotted like blood in the arteries nearing the heart of the city.” And then… she receives a moral manifestation.
Someone opens a door to a shop and Ellie steps up and follows the person inside. Inside the shop she reflects on her mothers love, and how she did not return it. In the photograph Reflection in water by Clarissa Leahy a girl is illustrated, surrounded by the blue sky, looking at her own reflection in the water. Now it is Ellie’s turn to reflect in the water, and study herself closely, what does she regret having done in her life? And what could she have done differently? Ellie’s mother appears in her mind, and she says her name out loud. Suddenly she feels lighter, and happier than ever. She realises that the major key to be happy, is a closer relationship to those things that has true value in life, such as her family, and now it is suddenly things as a funny looking clock that can make her giggle, instead of vulgar thing such as the black leather glove shoving the finger. As in the poem Mother, any distance greater than a single span by Simon Armitage, which is a poem about a boys (could be a girl, but it is written by a boy) relationship to his mother, the boy feels remorse of over the fact that he has a mother, but that they have an awful relationship. Ellie wants just as he wants, a closer relationship to her mother, now Ellie is willing to reach “towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky to fall or fly” . Ellie roamed the city looking for printer ink, looking for meaning; in the end of the short-story she finally found something that had true meaning to her, and was therefore ridden of her moral decay.
“I once was lost, but now I’m found” – Amazing Grace
Assignment (B)
Especially in the media, the urban environment has been depicted as something brutal and merciless, it is the law of the jungle and it is a place where only the strongest survive.
The fact that Anna Hope uses the urban setting emphasizes to the reader the vicious world Ellie lives in. Ellie does not even remember if they did any hard drugs such as cocaine and that leaves the reader speechless. The fact that cocaine may not be so unusual in the urban environment is a scary thought. “K, didn’t they do some K?” In the text “Consequences of youth substance abuse”, we are told that many young people who do drug abuse often experience a spectrum of problems, it could be academic difficulties, health-related problems or bad social relationships, and this in addition have consequences for family members, the community, and the society as a whole. This could be the case for Ellie, since she is portrayed as a rebel, not caring about school, and doing drugs, and furthermore she does not have a good relationship to her mother. If we should find a culprit to why Ellie have turned out that way, we would probably blame the urban environment; therefore, Anna Hope actually comments on the urban environment, a comment addressed to the government that they have to do something about these depressed young people roaming the streets of London looking for meaning. Ellie was lucky enough to see the light, others might not be as lucky as she was.