Karakteristik af Lucy Cooke i 'The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart'

The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart is a short story written by the British author Lucy Cross. It tells the story of a teenage girl named Lucy Cooke, who is in detention for hitting a classmate, Penny Jones. Mr. Paterson, the teacher that supervises the detention is surprised that Lucy is in detention since she’s a straight A student and one of the brainiest girls in school. He asks her why she’s in detention and she explains what happened. He wonders if it has anything to do with Lucy’s new friend Bethan Preece, whom he believes has been badly influencing Lucy. Lucy denies his accusation without hesitation, despite the fact that Bethan did in fact tell Lucy to hit Penny.

The protagonist, Lucy, comes off as an immature and desperate individual. She struggles with an inner conflict between fitting in with other teenagers or achieving good grades and being a good student. The physical setting is a school in Cardiff which also affects Lucy’s conflict in a negative way. Students often battle with identity crises and when surrounded by other judgmental and cruel students they usually have a harder time.Lucy befriends Bethan as an attempt to fit in. Her desire to be accepted gets to the point where she goes along with everything Bethan tells her to do even though her gut feeling tells her not to. For example when she hits Penny: “I didn’t know where I was aiming or why I was hitting her but I knew Bethan needed me to do it” (p. 35, ll. 25-26) or when Lucy takes up smoking because Bethan tells her to “Bethan tells me that smoking helps you stay thin” (p. 35, ll. 15). These lines inform the reader that Lucy has no idea why she’s acting the way she is, but that she feels the need to for the sake of fitting in. Multiple lines in the story showcase that Lucy is aware of Bethan influence on her for example on page 33 line 15 when she says that sometimes she is glad when her mom forbids her from seeing Bethan. Throughout the story Lucy draws and redraws a heart, that symbolizes her emotional state. In the beginning of the story she describes the heart as “a futuristic city full of tunnels for people to slide in” (p.34, ll. 4-5), here she’s describing her inability to be independent, she lets people in carelessly, without thinking about the consequences which emphasizes her immaturity. Towards the end of the story, Lucy starts pondering about her past achievements and remembers walking up the Sports Hall and loving it, she then asks for a new piece of paper to redraw the heart. This suggests that Lucy still knows her worth and wants to become a better person. At the end Lucy tells Mr. Paterson to throw out her new heart as she walks towards Bethan. This shows that Lucy has finally decided social acceptance over academic excellence.