Analyse af 'The Sin Bin or Lucy's Heart'

It is a common fact that it is tough to be in your adolescent years. That is one of the main reasons this theme has become so popular in the world of fictional writing. Many short stories, novels and other fictional and non-fictional texts revolve around this difficult time. One of these texts is “The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart” written by Lucy Cross. The story is very controversial because of how many things this story tells about everyday life. In this essay, I want to analyse and interpret the story and mainly focus on the task everyone goes through, growing up.

The story “The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart” is about a girl called Lucy. She is the first person narrator, who sits in detention for hitting a girl. While in detention she draws heart on paper and reflects about why she hit that girl and what she is becoming. Lucy tells us the reason she hit that girl, whose name is Penny and once was Lucy’s best friend, is because her new best friend, Bethan, wanted her to. Already here we are alert because a friendship, where a girl asks another to hit a third girl, does not seem like a good friendship. It is clear trough the text that Lucy looks up to Bethan. Just not for the right reasons. She keeps mentioning how hard and cool she is, and how everyone is afraid of her, and she acts all grown-up. Despite this Lucy also says, “Sometimes when I think about Bethan I get this burning pressing in my head and my tommy. Sometimes I’m glad when my mum says I can’t go round and see her” (p. 33 l. 13-15). So the friendship between these two girls is not very good. It is clear that Bethan is the dominating one in the friendship. It also seems like Lucy is a little afraid of Bethan. On p. 35 l. 22-27 Lucy tells us how she really feels about hitting Penny in the face. She actually did not want to hit her, but she does it anyway even though she feels really bad about it. This is because Bethan stands right behind her and pressure Lucy. Besides this on p. 35 l. 28-31 Lucy adds some fur to the heart she is drawing. The picture becomes darker and darker and she imagines this is how a heart full of tar looks. This is a reaction to what stand right before this in the text. She talks about her hitting Penny, and that it maybe was a little wrong. The heart symbolises her heart of emotions. It becomes darker and darker because she becomes a different person who does bad things. Lucy is a weak and naïve girl. All she wants is to be liked. She just does not realize her mother already loves her, and other persons, besides Bethan, can grow to love her. This makes her an simple aim for group pressure.