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Written Assignment 4 – Essay on Characterization The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart is a short story about a young girl, Lucy, who used to be a grade A student, but after she have started hanging out with Bethan her life has changed. Lucy’s beats up one of her best friends to prove that she is a worthy friend to Bethan. Lucy’s is looking forward to the future, when life hopefully is a little less complicated. The short story is about peer pressure, bulling and a young girl who is trying to grow up and to find her identity.
Lucy is a young girl, who used to be a grade A student and win prizes at the prize day at school. She has become friends with the tough girl Bethan. Because of the friendship with Bethan she is in detention for the very first time of her life. She is in detention because she has beaten up the girl who used to be her best friend, just because Bethan told her to. Lucy is very dependent and she is trying very hard to detach and she searches the protection she can get by being friends with Bethan.
Lucy does not trust herself and her own opinion, she keeps saying Bethan says, mom says – which I take as a sign of her not believing in herself enough to rely on herself. I think Lucy used to have a good relationship with her mother but after, she has started hanging out with Bethan their relationship is damaged. Lucy’s relationship with Bethan is not equal, Lucy feels save around Bethan because no one dares to touch her, but at the same time she does not really mind when her mother tells her that she can’t be hanging out with Bethan all the time.
Bethan has a kind of power or controls to make Lucy do stuff that she would never have done on her own, for example like beaten up Penny. Penny and Lucy used to be really close, and Penny have told Lucy some deep secrets, and I think Lucy feels very bad about beating Penny up, but she wants this new image so bad that she is not true to herself and therefore do not have the courage or the will to tell Penny she is sorry. Lucy is looking forward to the future when she is grown up and does not need to worry that much about how other people think about her, and when she hopefully have gotten more confident.
Bethan is the tough girl at school. She is hanging out with some boys who are a little older and not exactly what your mother would call “good company”. Bethan does not like the school at all, and she really do not like grade A students or the prize day, actually she goes as far as saying that she was embarrassed that Lucy went. She takes every chance that she gets to stay away from school. Penny used to be a really good friend of Lucy, but after Lucy has beaten her up she feels wounded and betrayed, especially because at home her father is hitting her mother.
Penny thought she could trust in Lucy and rely on her, but she ended up getting very disappointed. She would like to go to one of the fee-paid schools, to get away from the things happing at the school. Penny’s family just does not have the money for a fee-paid school, and that makes the biggest wish for Penny to be a stipendium. Lucy and Penny used to be pretty equal, they both seemed to like school, do their homework and enjoying each other’s company.
Penny’s family has not got that many money, and therefore she cannot go to the fee-paid school, and Lucy’s mother says it is against her principles. I think that Lucy would like to be friends with Penny tough she hit her, I just think that she is afraid not to be able to be friends with Bethan if she choose to hang out with Penny. Lucy and Bethan are two very different personalities and they are having very different lifes. But Lucy wants to be a bit more like Bethan, and Bethan asks Lucy to be her best friend and at the same times she makes her choose between herself and Penny.
The relationship that used to be between Lucy and Penny is in my opinion the best, to persons who get along and no one who has the power or is in control. There is some violence in the story The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart and in the story Just Like That as well, the violence in The Sin Bin or Lucy’s Heart is when Lucy beats up Penny, which is a cruel thing to do and in this case it is even more cruel because Penny have told Lucy about how her father hits her mother.
In the story Just Like That the violence is different, it is the man and the boy who shoot the kangaroos. In some ways you can compare the violence or the act behind the violence, both Lucy and the boy are forced to do something to prove that they can handle it and that they are mature enough to do this. The boy in Just Like That expects to become a man after shooting a few kangaroos and to be accepted, the same with Lucy, she is doing it to convince Bethan that she is trustworthy and to be accepted. I think violence in book and TV can be a good thing.
In the real world violence does happen, and most stories are in my opinion best if they are not too far from real life. But I am against the violence as soon as it is more of an encouragement than a manufacture of real life. I think what these stories really is about, is that one need to be true to oneself and try not to be affected to much by peer pressure. I think that bulling is a bad thing, physical bulling is hard and visible, but in general I think mental bulling is even worse. It will make you fell wrong and hurt you really bad. All kinds of bulling can mark you forever.