...A Gab of Sky “It is dark, but the wrong dark. Something is wrong with the dark”, sounds the opening sentence in the short story “A Gab of Sky” which is written by Anna Hope in 2008. Ellie is parties all nights with some friends. In these parties Ellie and her friends take several drugs. Because of these parties and drugs and the alcohol, Ellie is having trouble getting up of her bed and do her assignments. Because she knows there will be consequences if Ellie does not make her assignments. “She needs to get some printer ink, if she's going to do this essay. And if not? Will they really kick her off the course? Or will she have to repeat the year?” (P.2, ll.47-48) In the short story we follow Ellie’s adventure, on her search for printer ink for the essay. Ellie’s adventure is located in London. Ellie is having a hard time to think straight and concentrate about her “mission”, to get the printer ink for her essay assignment. She gets distracted by things on her adventure, like the British Museum, she has never been there, so she decided to visit it. Ellie comes sometimes to the thought that she can’t do the assignment or get printer ink. And when these thought crosses her head, she is fading, getting grey. But the thoughts of that the University College London kicks her out frightens her and give her some kind of confidence to complete her mission. She can’t get her head together, all the pain is killing her; “Ellie's head is throbbing and her skull feels as though it might...
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...finger for the trip home but just when they had left the “evil” father took it away from him and the trip was transformed from happy to noisy frustration. Is it OK to hold an innocent baby hostage in the name of generation gap and gender struggle? ”Sugar Baby” is a short Scottish story written by Fiona Gibson in 2000. The story exposes some themes of current interest about the issue of raising a child in a modern society. The story takes place in the Old Town in Edinburgh and deals with a young family consisting of a father, a mother, a baby son and grandmother who babysits from time to time. The only name we don’t hear in this short story is the baby’s name. It could be the authors way to show us who the text really is about. The baby is only an accessory in the story that the author has used to point out some other important themes. Most of all it talks to today's parents and their way of parenting their children. The father (Joe) is the main character. He is a very caring father who only wishes to do the best for his son. But when it comes to the child’s nutrition he becomes to overprotective. He does not allow the baby to eat sugar rich food and he had agreed with Helen, the mother, not to dose the child up with e-additives. Because of Joe’s young age he does not have the experience of childcare instead of examine oneself he had found the help in books and health magazines whose information he has full belief in. He is the totally opposite of Helens mum who has so much...
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...difficult to make their own decisions, and feel pressured. Therefor they want to escape from reality by ingesting drugs or drinking alcohol which could be their way of protesting against responsibilities and a search for freedom, or maybe it is just because they are in that age where they are open to all kinds of experimentations. This is what the main character Ellie is facing, in the short story “A Gap of Sky” written by Anna Hope in 2008; Ellie is wandering around in the streets of London and in her own mind as well. Her walk around London’s streets becomes a walk through her own mind. Crisis, confusion, changes, responsibilities and fear, are the main components of a short story by Anna Hope. A story which is intriguing, and will take you one step closer, to understand what a ‘typical’ teenager can go through. In this essay I will analyze and interpret Anna Hope’s short story A Gap of Sky. I will characterize the main character Ellie, and analyze her behavior as a teenager. I will also focus on the narrative technique in the short story and the importance of the city sitting. Though an analysis I will conclude upon my discoveries and determine the theme of the story. The main character of the short story, nineteen year old Ellie, is a university student and lives in London. She has...
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...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...
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...A Gap of Sky We all know that partying and hanging out with friends is more fun than studying and doing homework. That is a part of youth. It is not always easy to be young. Sometimes you escape the reality by taking drugs or alcohol and end up unsuccessful. Nowadays young people have to think about their own life and school to become successful and not be distracted by their surroundings. Last but not least, not to be afraid to failure in life because anything is possible if you want to do the effort it takes. This is the case of Ellie in the short story “A Gap of Sky” written by Anna Hope. The short story takes place in London. She lives in the epicenter in a modern society. It symbolizes a city of noise, filled opportunities, and people. This is an urban environment which affects her daily life. In the city there are plenty of places to get drugs and go to a nightclub or something like that. As described on (P. 2 l. 57-58): “There are people moving together, here in this part of London, moving with purpose, with meaning and Ellie is one of them.” With that she means that life in London and the big city is very intense and especially fast moving; there is no room for being lost in this environment. Ellie knows all about the behavior in the city, and all the street-names and buildings. But it is also a dangerous environment as we read on (P. 3 l. 90-91): “She dodges her way through the traffic, clotted like blood in the arteries nearing the heart of the city”. It is like...
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...history of the world will be the perfect result of a museum-visit. But as we are presented for in this 2007-short-story “In the National Gallery” by Doris Lessing, not just the art can make an impression on you. The sauntering people around you can get you just as entertained, and you might even be presented for the contrasts in the different generations over the ages. In the in media res opening we are presented to a first-person-narrator whose gender and appearance remains unknown throughout the story. She (or he) is spending a one hour break at a museum with a very clear and simple intent. The plan is to find a great painting centered in the middle of the room where she can sit and study it. But not just any painting (p. 1 lines 4): “It should be already known to me”, is how the text describes it, and indicates that we might be dealing with narrator who is playing safe. George Stubbs painting “Chestnut Horse” is the piece of art she ends up admiring. At first she is alone in the room, but then an elder (p. 1 lines 9) “well-presented” man joins her. He is sitting quietly and observing the painting until a younger boy, which relation to the man we are not presented for, takes the seat next to him. The man in his sixties starts telling the boy about the “Chestnut Horse”, and in this passage the reader is presented for an essential theme in the story; generations gaps. Though our narrator is very interested in the man's speech (p.1 lines 15): “How much I would have liked...
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...A. In this short story by Doris Lessing, we meet a young man, an individual from a group of schoolgirls, and most importantly, a man about the age of 60. The narrator, whose name and gender is not given, also plays a part in the story. The old man is described as well presented, and knows a lot about paintings, or at least George Stubbs’ chestnut horse. The narrator certainly has respect for the old man, and implies that if he spoke louder when telling about the painting, people would mistake him for an official guide. “How much I would have liked to know as much as he did, and to share his passion for Stubbs and the horse”. This shows that the old man is truly sharing his passion with his young acquaintance, who unfortunately does not want to sit through it. The narrator also has an important role. It is because of him/her we get to hear the old man’s story about his childhood love. However, it is not before he deems the narrator worth it, that he shares his story. “Now he looked properly at me, took me in, decided I was worthy to continue.” This shows that the old man finds the narrator more mature and interesting than the young man. One of the biggest themes is the different stages in life. When the old man was in love with a 16-year-old girl, just like the one who sleeps near him in the story, he was only 12, and it meant that they were in completely different stages of their lives. The age gap was too big, just like it is in the story, now that the man is 60 years...
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...old. Jumpa Lahiri learned her Bengali heritage from her mother from a very early age. Jhumpa Lahiri is the daughter of a librarian and school teacher. She has always been inclined to creative writing. She married Alberto Vourvoulias Bush in 2001. They have two children from their marriage Octavio and Noor. Jumpa Lahiri received her B.A in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She went on to earn an M.A. in English, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Boston University. From 1997-98, she held a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center. Right from a very young age she felt very strong ties to her parent’s homeland, India, as well as the United States and England. A sense of homelessness and an inability to feel accepted took place as she grew up with the ties to all three countries. To her it is an inheritance of her parent’s ties to India. “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially so for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously, as is the case for their children.”- Jhumpa Lahiri. She is indeed the storyteller who weaves the lace of love, identity, crisis, lies and faults in a matured way. Her works are enriched with sensitive dilemmas in life. Characters in her books experience cultural as well as the generational gaps. She therefore comments on the effects of Western colonialism on Indians. Jumpa...
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...A gap of sky People have to find themselves when they grow up, and it can cost a lot of frustrations. There are so many things you have to think about and take care of when you stand on the line between being a child and an independent adult person. You have to learn to take responsibility for yourself and that can be one of the hardest parts – that’s when you disappoint yourself and the people around you the most because you don’t always see how important something really is. Sometimes you don’t even know what you feel, and that’s why you see how tempting it is to choose the easy way, where you just live your life and pretend that you don’t have to worry about anything, and keep locking your bad conscience out of your head and just do what you exactly feel to do in the moment. The story “A gap of sky” written by Anna Hope (2008) is about a character named Ellie who is nineteen years old and has come to a place in her life where she has to find herself and be a sensible person and take responsibility. Ellie is the main character in the short story. She’s nineteen years old, and a wild girl, living the wild life with several kinds of drugs, parties and alcohol in London. We are introduced to her when she wakes up in her room on a Monday after a wild night going out, which alludes that she’s been going out on a Sunday which is an unusually day to go party. She doesn’t care much about school and it seems like she really doesn’t want go there, and she’s only doing it because...
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...Audiences want the latest news simultaneously on their smart devices and the massive array of media outlets want to be the audience’s main source. With the hearts, minds, and wallets of the audience up for grabs it, is no wonder why mass media news stories are manipulated to present biased impressions on events, positioning than in whatever way suits their interests. Research has shown that 53% of people believe the news being presented to them is the truth. So why do we believe this? It all happens within our minds and emotions that make us receptive to lies, and resistant to information that exposes the truth........According to a...
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...having problems being true to ourselves and our fellow human beings which often causes conflicts. This is exactly some of the main subjects The Dress is dealing with. We are introduced to the feminine third-person narrator named Rachel, who is accusing her sister Flora for having stolen her new dress, bought for the occasion of their mothers’ birthday. You could say that the relationship between Rachel and Flora is very common for sisters at almost the same age. In a way relationships between sisters or siblings will always be influenced by jealousy. The fight about the dress is influenced by the indirectly jealousy between the sisters. As mentioned in the quotation below it becomes some kind of an occupation for Flora having the dress, wearing the dress and feeling the dress. And it also reflects her rising jealousy towards Rachel. “It made her feel taller, braver, cleverer, and Rachel was all those things already” One could say that there is a gap among Rachel and Flora which causes the dress and as the story continues the gap among them are getting bigger and bigger. As they are sitting in the restaurant celebrating the mothers’ fortieth year old birthday Rachel is confronting Flora about the missing dress of hers. But Flora refuses several times that her being the guilty one and is also being very provoking in her sentences. As mentioned in the quotation below...
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...commodity is anything for which there is a demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market Kodak is a great example in which marketing myopia was present. The digital camera was invented at Kodak in 1975. But instead of marketing the new technology, the company kept it under wraps for fear of hurting its lucrative film business. And when Kodak decided to get in the game it was too late. Kodak had the myopic view that the company was in the film business rather than the story telling business. But customers aren’t buying cameras and film as much as they are buying a record of their memories. Kodak therefore misdefined the business they were in: instead of focusing on the product: capturing stories, they hooked on the commodity: selling film. Marketing Myopia is the title of an important marketing paper written by Theodore Levitt and published in 1960 in the Harvard Business Review • ◦ #Kodak ◦ #Marketing ◦ #Innovation • 1 year ago • 10 • Permalink Share Short URL...
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...inaccurate and can end up weaving and constructing a story not completely precise. This is the case in the short story, Death in the Woods written by Sherwood Anderson which has a narrator that is not only inaccurate in his narrative but he also at several points makes clear his fallacious events within the story. The narrator starts the story by giving the main character context: her old age, her attire, along with making clear that the protagonist was a nameless woman who spoke to no one. The narrator’s first erroneous statement was the name of the protagonist which he stated directly after claiming the woman was nameless. The next sign of the narrator’s lack of knowledge, leading to a incorrect assumption, is when the narrator explains a scenario in which the protagonist visits the shop of a butcher. Within this description the narrator, at which point was a child living in the same town as the old woman, states the woman was alone with the butcher in the shop, meaning the entire situation is a conjecture with no obvious factual evidence. Both of these points prove that the narrator of the short story is not a reliable source and the story itself is not at all factual though based on what seems to be a true story. Opening the story with the speculation of the lives of other individuals, the narrator instantly shows that he is prone to conjecture and shows his inconsistency as a citable source in the telling of this story. The narrator then focuses on one select scenario in...
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...1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF THE KEY POINT OF THE ARTICLE 2.1 Introduction Singapore is an urban city with a modern multi-modal public transport service system. However, there have existed gaps between customer expectations and customer perceptions, especially in using bus services. This report will analyze these gaps and how bus operators recover their service quality and satisfy their customers. 2.2 Summary of the key points of the article Recently, The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has allowed the first privately run feeder bus service to boost the network. This is good news for customers who are suffering of waiting for the bus for a long time at crowded bus stations during the peak hours and using congested buses. Customers are happy with the improvement of bus service. Previously, customers were frustrated because of insufficiency of bus service in peak hours. They have to wait from 30 to 40 minutes. But from now on, customers will be more satisfaction with the improvement of bus services in Singapore. Bus frequency has improved by 1 to 5 minutes instead of 10 to 13 minutes previously. The “peak period short service” 912P reduce waiting time and ease congestion. Extra supply of bus service will always be helpful with customers in reducing the crowded situation in some buses and reduce waiting time at the congested bus stations. 2. HOW THE ARTICLE RELATES TO THE CONCEPTS 3.3 Customers’ expectations of bus services “Customers’ expectations...
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...suppression of the sorrows followed by death can end up being most expressive and can affect the future crucially. This exact issue has Robin Black presented in the short story “… Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” from 2010. The title plays an important role when interpreting the substantial themes and symbols in the short story. First of all, the story begins with Sarah, the protagonist, playing with her brother and friends. They’re acting the history of the beheading of the second wife of King Henry VIII of England. The king had six wives, which constituted a rhyme to remember their fates. Lady Anne Boleyn, his second wife, was beheaded. The title can indicate the fate of the protagonist in Robin Black’s story. When her brother Terry’s ill, she’s felling separated from him, hence divorced. He dies and this symbolizes the “beheading” of Terry. The last destiny in the rhyme is survival, of this, she will survive. Even though she experiences the “divorce” and “beheading”, she will survive, and it’s not until she experiences the death of a friend of her son and she shares her inner pain with him, the feeling of survival takes part in her body. Sarah is shocked by her brother’s death and her reaction is reflected in the very simple and objective language and the structure of the short story. Robert Black wrote the story in a first-person narrative style in present and is mainly consisted of...
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