The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart
A characterisation of Lucy
The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart begins with the girl Lucy Cooke, who is sitting in detention, or the so-called ‘sin bin’. She’s young; this is made very clear from the fact that she’s at still in school, maybe 7th or 8th grade, and the boy in front of her, who, presumably, is Lucy’s peer, has a lot of spots; a thing associated with teenagers.
She’s in detention for having hit Penny Jones; a girl who apparently has enough problems without Lucy hitting her. Recalling a time when they were close friends, Lucy tells about Penny whose fa-ther hits her mother and how Penny cried then, too (Page 35, line 20-22).
But why does Lucy hit her then? Why would she do that to a girl she knows is in a bad enough situation already? The immediate and easy answer would be that Lucy does this for popularity. Be-than, a girl whom wiggled herself into Lucy’s life and is now her best friend, is the toughest girl in their year. Without having anything to say about it, and I sincerely doubt that Lucy had anything to say in this situation, as Bethan one day ‘decided’ that they should be best friends, Lucy finds her-self sandwiched between the girl she defines herself as; the brainiest girl in the year, and the girl the rest of the school defines her as when she hangs out with Bethan. Her reputation changes; she goes from being smart, and maybe not that popular, to being a stereotypical ‘tough girl’ and feared. Many people has a hard time distinguishing fear and respect, and it’s implied that Lucy enjoys being in the spotlight when she tells about her second place a Prize Day, so she finds herself imitating Bethan.
Lucy is a very dependant soul; she isn’t capable of making her own decisions, which is why she throughout the story rationalises her actions with “she says”. An example is on page 35, line 40- 41. Bethan tells her that she has to wear blue eyeliner, and even though Lucy doesn’t like it she wears it anyway. When she then goes home she takes it off because her mom says she shouldn’t wear make-up. The reason Lucy hit Penny is that Lucy has become so dependent on Bethan telling her what to do so she doesn’t have to make her own decisions, to find her own identity, that she would rather do something she knows is wrong than lose that thing that makes her life easier by living it for her: Bethan.
I think that the reason that it is Penny in particular Lucy hits is because Penny represents Lucy’s old life. The way Lucy’s life was before she became friends with Bethan.
It’s made very clear that Lucy is a grade A-student, and she wanted to go to the private school Howell’s. Penny too is a good student; she came in fourth whereas Lucy came in second at Prize Day, Penny and Lucy used to be close, and now Penny attends Howell’s. It’s something Lucy can identify with, but since she’s supposed to leave behind her old identity, and become a whole new person, Bethan tells her to hit Penny; the superficial picture of who Lucy used to be, and the former best friend. Hitting her is like burning the last bridge between who Penny wants to be and who she thinks is the easiest to be. It has nothing to do with Lucy not liking Penny, because she does, actual-ly I think Lucy feels a bit superior to Penny, as she constantly victimises her by thinking ‘poor Pen-ny’, and by mentioning that she was academically better.
This story is about identity and finding who you are. Lucy dreads those things and is too scared to take matters into own hands. The reason she looks forward to the future is because at her age we are supposed to find out who we are. Sometimes during the story se says “I can’t wait for the future when there aren’t so many things to worry about.”. What I think she refers to are the superficial things such as whether or not to wear blue eyeliner or how I big a proprity school is, but I also think that those concerns root deeper than that. We live in a world of labels; you do something and that’s who you are. If Lucy goes with Bethan on her ‘tough-girl’ act, that’s who she’ll eventually become, because that is how the world will se her, and mold her into.
When it comes to the heart she’s drawing she starts out with “Copying line drawings of the heart”, and I think this is a statement that she is just copying what others are telling her to do. Next thing she says is “my heart is rubbish”, meanning she is dissatisfied with copying what others tell her. “The heart is shaped like an upside-down pear” she says, and I think this means that it feels wrong; it feels like it has fallen upside-down, awkwardly misplaced in her chest, because this heart isn’t her. Then she’s adding some fur to the arteries, and she’s doing them hard and black, like tar. Because that how she imagines her heart looks like. Hard ad black.
On page 36 she asks for a new piece og paper. I think that this is equal to her asking for a second chance, and Mr. Paterson, the teacher, gives her the new piece of paper, symbolically giving her a second chance. Her mom always told her to use softer pencils than the one she is using, and she then roots around the bottom of her bag to find one, only to reveal that she haas a quite impressive collection of pencils. Metaphorically this, to me, means that she uses this second chance she has gotten to become softer like her mother told her and the person she wants to be. The wide range of pencils represents the different personlaities of Lucy Cooke, and she has to choose now. She selects the last, soothest and softest pencil of them all. When she is nearly finished she states that she thinks that this one looks more real, meaning she identifies with this one better. In the end though, when Paterson tells her her heart is really good, and if she wants to keep it, she tells him to chuck it. She then heads over to Bethan. Her decision is made.