Analyse af 'Are We Nearly There?' af Kate Smalley Ellis

The short story “Are We Nearly There?”, 2015 by Kate Smalley Ellis deals with the struggles of growing up and acknowledging yourself. It follows protagonist Jen who is driving hungover in traffic while remembering the night before, when she lost her virginity.

Jen is a 17-year-old girl who is going through teenage years. She is insecure about her sex life and is not comfortable driving the car with her family. She thinks that her parents shouldn’t trust her to drive on a three-lane road. Her relationship to her parents isn’t helping her situation. Her father is very absent and described as sleeping during almost the whole trip. Her mother is constantly correcting her and misbelieves her driving skills. There is not one single point during the drive that she doesn’t receive critic from her parents and her annoying sister Shelly. Her father calls her very sensitive. However, Jen proves him wrong. She wants to be the opposite of what her father thinks about her. Therefore, when Simon says he loves her, she just responds ‘oh’. But when she thinks about the night before she thinks through every detail and her sexual experience is described such: “I mean, he moved himself in and out but none of the other stuff happened. No weird noises came out of me. It felt OK. (Line 109 page 4)Her father is right because she seems very sensible without wanting to be it. It seems like she is having a hard time with just acknowledging herself, which is very reasonable as her mother, especially, isn’t helping her dealing with her insecurities.