Gap of Sky

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“A Gap of Sky” by Anna Hope Rikke “A Gap of Sky” by Anna Hope is a short story about a young girl caught in a dilemma between expectations and desires. It is a portrait of a young girl on drugs and a description of what the city can do to a person who stands alone without the support and care from other people. The narrator is third person and omniscient, and the narrative technique can be described with the phrase “stream of consciousness” which is a technique that writer and feminist Virginia Woolf used a lot in her works. This “stream” is very confusing, because it describes the situation by every little thought of the persona who in this case is very distractive and unfocused as a result of ingesting drugs - she changes her focus by the second. Ellie is a young student living in London. She has a lot of pressure on her shoulders because her parents have made her take a course at the UCL which she is about to flunk if she does not hand in an essay about Virginia Woolf. Only, the problem is that she wakes up Monday at half past four in the afternoon realizing that the essay, which she has not started yet, is due for Tuesday at nine. Her thoughts and actions are hectic and out of order. The hallucinatory drugs she has been taking and the alcohol she has been drinking all night make her unfocused, and as her printer has run out of ink, Ellie decides for herself that she has to go out in city to buy some ink before she can get to write the essay, even though all the stores are about to close. Ellie is as far from sober as she could be, and the big city itself is a jungle of distraction to her unfocused mind. But she has a mission, a purpose, and she moves through the streets beside other Londoners with a mission. It makes her feel like a functioning part in a greater machinery. On her way she comes across an iron railing where someone has left behind
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