Analysis of the Story Through the Tunnel by Doris May Lessing

The author of the story “Through the Tunnel” Doris May Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, Children of Violence, The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Lessing was born in Persia (now Iran). Her father, Captain, who had lost a leg during his service in World War I, met his future wife, a nurse, at the Hospital where he was recovering from amputation. Lessing left school at age 14, and was self-educated; she left home at 15 and worked as a nursemaid. She started reading material that her employer gave her on politics and sociology and began writing around this time. Lessing first sold stories to magazines at the age of 15, in South Africa. Lessing's fiction is commonly divided into three distinct phases: the Communist theme (1944–56), when she was writing radically on social issues (to which she returned in The Good Terrorist [1985]); the psychological theme (1956–1969) and detailed the conflicts inherent to a changing society.

The title of the story “Through the Tunnel” is the foreshadowing and symbol at once, as the reader guesses what its gonna be about, and finds out in the end that the tunnel is an important symbol. (of gaining courage, braveness, that Jerry went through it)

Main themes are: 1) Courage in mans nature: Jerry had the courage to swim through the tunnel, even though he doubted that he wouldn't be able to make it. 2)Pride: Because of Jerry's pride, he pushed himself to be able to dive off the rock and swim through the tunnel with the bigger boys. "He felt he was accepted and he dived again, carefully, proud of himself". 3)Will to survive: Jerry felt like he wasn't going to make it during the last stretch of the tunnel, but he just kept pushing and finally, he made it and got out. 4)Gaining maturity: thanks to this event in his life, Jerry passed some kind of a test, test on his maturity, and he proved to himself that he deserves this quality by getting into tunnel.

The idea is to show how a person is capable to prove primarily to himself that he can do something once impossible for him. He wants to prove that he is man enough to swim through the tunnel in the rock, and it is Jerry's determination and self-confidence that allows him to focus completely on his goal of getting through the tunnel.

The setting of the story is clear from the beginning – it’s a beach, a main char. and his mother are at a beach they have come to many times in years past. Though the beach’s location is not given, it is implied to be in a foreign country. "It was a wild-looking place, and there was no one there" we are given the mother's view of the boy's beach, which in her opinion is "wild looking".

In the exposition, Jerry, a young English boy, and his mother have vacation at a beach they have come to many times in years past. He wanted to act grown-up and not constantly be with his mother. He is strong swimmer, Jerry plunges into the sea and goes so far out that he can see his mother only as a small yellow spot. Looking back to shore, Jerry sees some boys go running down to the rocks, and he swims over toward them. He watches the boys, who are older and bigger than he is, until finally one waves at him and Jerry swims eagerly over. As soon as they realize he is a foreigner, though, they forget about him, but he is happy just to be among them. Jerry joins them in diving off a high point into the water for a while, and then the biggest boy dives in and does not come up. Jerry dives down, too, and sees a “black wall of rock.” When the boys come up on the other side of the rock, he “understood that they had swum through some gap or hole in it. Jerry feels failure and shame, yelling at them first in English and then in nonsensical French. The boys dive into the water all around him, and he panics when there is no one in the water. Only when his count reaches 160 boys come up. He aims to pass this tunnel. After first attempts, his nose bleeds so badly, he becomes dizzy, and he worries that he really might die trapped in the tunnel. Jerry convinced his mother to buy him goggles, which he needed to see where the tunnel begins. He resolves to wait until the following summer, when he will be bigger and stronger, but then emotions overtake him and he feels that he must make his attempt immediately — now or never. He prepared himself, and dived. At first he felt like a balloon, he could hold his breath forever, but as the tunnel became darker, he started to panic. Jerry kept swimming and counting seconds, he thought he was going to die. Finally, Jerry saw a light in the distance, and he swam to the surface. Although his nose was bleeding, and he was in extreme pain, Jerry has proved to himself what he was capable of.

!!!On vacation in a foreign town Jerry sees older boys diving into the water, and figures out that there is an underwater tunnel. After Jerry finds the tunnel, he makes it his goal of getting all the way through the tunnel. In order to do this he needs to hold his breath for quite a long time. He spends his entire vacation training himself to hold his breath long enough to make it all the way through the tunnel and back to the surface.

The conflicts in this story were (person vs. himself), (person vs. person), and (person vs. nature). Jerry had to prove to himself his own capabilities. Jerry also interacted with boys he met, when he tried to prove to the boys how strong he is. Jerry competed against nature, when he came up for breath after going through the tunnel, and had to fight against the water.

The main character is Jerry, an English boy, an only child, eleven years old. Her mother was a widow;;; We can call Jerry round character, as there are several stages in the story that change him. 1)He went from not being able to hold his breath for a long time, to holding it for two to three minutes. 2)He also went from the safe, busy beach with his mother, to the risky rocky bay with the boys he met. 3)The most significant was the obvious change from boy to a young man. The writer used indirect characterization to describe characters. Jerry is a person who likes to push himself to the limits and likes the challenge.