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The Sin Bin

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The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart

It is not and has never been easy being a teenager. With teenage life, comes confusion, overwhelming feelings, a new self-awareness and search for one’s identity and path of life.
This is exactly what we see in Lucy Cross’s short story “The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart”, where we meet a teenage girl, who is very unsure of what she wants and therefor only strives to please her surroundings in her search for acceptance. She is at a breaking point, where she has to choose her way, identity, and which type of friends she wants to be related to. Which way will she go?
Through a first-person narrator we are able to know what Lucy is thinking. This gives us greater insight into what goes on in her mind.
Lucy is an A-grade student, but it is not all fun and games. She is a teenage girl struggling to find herself and way in life. She is at that stage where you have to decide, who you want to be and which is something your surroundings has a great impact on.
The first thing we learn from the story is that she is in detention and therefore the reader immediately gets the impression that the main character is a “bad girl”. But we are soon proven wrong. The reaction of her old teacher to her detention, clearly shoes how unusual it is for Lucy to behave this way. “What on earth are you doing in here, Lucy?”She was given detention because she hit Penny Jones. “Penny Jones is very thin. When I hit her, I thought she just might fall over.” “… I didn’t know where I was aiming or why I was hitting her but I knew Bethan needed me to do it” Her need for acceptance simply makes her do whatever Bethan ask her to do - even though she does not really want to. “… I didn’t know where I was aiming or why I was hitting her but I knew Bethan needed me to do it” It is clear that Bethan is the dominating part of their relationship, but Lucy is not only affected

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