Analyse af 'Are We Nearly There?'

Everyone knows what the teenagers are like, the grumpy and rebellious children on their journey to becoming adults. All the people that have passed the teenage stage of life or are in it, know how it feels. The exaggerated emotions going on non-stop, the mood swings, the new interests that suddenly appear out of nowhere, and the parties where you discover the truth about yourself and get to be the turbulent and raging monster you are keeping on the inside of your normal appearance. The short story “Are We Nearly There?” by Kate Smalley Ellis published in 2015, is hovering around the theme “teenage life” and “transition from a child to an adult”. The narrator, a 17-year old teenage girl named Jen, is driving on the motorway for the first time with her new driver’s license. She is on the way to her grandmother’s, while she is driving hungover with an unfocused mind that is constantly remembering the night before with Simon, where she lost her virginity.

The short story is taking place in the car that Jen is driving to her grandmother’s, but the readers also get to see Simon’s room, which is shown in the form of flashbacks, when Jen is thinking about last night’s event. Through the story, it is a 1st person narrator from the perspective of Jen. The narrator has a limited point of view, for the reason that we don’t know anything about the future, or what the other family members are thinking. The readers have full access to Jen’s thoughts, which is opening up a landscape of emotions, and making the readers understand the situation that they have been placed in, for the particular reason that it isn’t an out-loud conversation that is keeping the readers informed, but also the thoughts that the narrator is making sure we hear.