Doris Lessig's Through The Tunnel

In life, one must overcome their fears in order to achieve or successfully attain a certain goal in their mind. The short story “Through the Tunnel”, by Doris Lessing tells us about how Jerry builds confidence and maturity throughout the story, by overcoming his fear of going through the dark and scary tunnel underneath the water. The author portrays the idea of overcoming one’s fear to achieve a goal through Jerry, who was once a childish and isolated character, had begun his risky adventure of going through the tunnel to prove his worth to a group of boys and along the way discovers what he truly wants. Over time he becomes more mature and in the end, gain self-acceptance.

The settings are important in a story because they tell where and when the story takes place. A reader should always focus on the setting, so he will not get lost in the story. In Doris Lessing’s “Through the Tunnel,” the story focuses on a boy named Jerry trying to accomplish something very difficult while his mother wants him to stay safe. He sees some boys swimming through a challenging tunnel and he tries to go through the tunnel to impress them in order to become friends with them. The setting in “Through the Tunnel” has an impact on the characters, the plot, and the symbols.

In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.

In the story “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing the main character Jerry is young and sees a group boys do something that he finds interesting, Going through the tunnel. The problem is he is too young and too weak to do it. The boys were Judging and excluding him and it made him sad. Jerry used the negative actions of the french boys as motivation to set a goal of swimming through the tunnel before he leaves. Although Jerry is not physically strong or mature he has a large amount of mental strength and uses what should be his weakness be his strength.

Mary Wroth alludes to mythology in her sonnet “In This Strange Labyrinth” to describe a woman’s confused struggle with love. The speaker of the poem is a woman stuck in a labyrinth, alluding to the original myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The suggestion that love is not perfect and in fact painful was a revolutionary thing for a woman to write about in the Renaissance. Wroth uses the poem’s title and its relation to the myth, symbolism and poem structure to communicate her message about the tortures of love.

A part of maturing is finally doing things independently without the supervision from parents. In her short story, “Through the Tunnel”, Doris Lessing conveys the concept of maturing through becoming self-sufficient. Lessing uses characterization and symbolism to show that being self-reliant is a part of growing up.

Some people believe that lies will always be bitter in the end, no matter how sweet you make them in the beginning. In William Gass’ The Tunnel, he expounds the validity of this belief by taking the reader on an emotionally evolving journey, as he recounts the self-realization of a young boy, who’s frightening lie unravels in front of not only his own eyes, but also the readers. Gass successfully enriches this story with striking imagery, symbolism, and comparisons; exposing how no matter how sweet you make a lie in the beginning, it will always turn bitter in the end.

Cynthia Rowland was an outwardly vivacious and successful television news reporter, who inwardly had slipped into the depths of bulimia. An addiction to binging and purging and heavy doses of laxatives finally landed her in treatment. The Monster Within tells the story of her descent into sickness, her struggle to learn why she was engaging in slow suicide, and the courage and grace it took to get well.

Tone is stated to be something that is “a general tone or attitude of a place, piece of writing, situation, ect…” Tone helps represent the writer or Narrator’s point or feeling throughout a story. In “Sixteen” by Maureen Daly, the Narrator of the story is a 16 year old girl talking about love and how blind people can be because of it. “Through the Tunnel”, by author Doris Lessing, on the other hand, is about an 11-year-old boy who creates his coming of age story by, literally, swimming through a tunnel. The distinction of plots and settings in these stories couldn’t be more different but similar tones throughout the stories almost bind them in a way. Similar tones in “Sixteen” and “Through the Tunnel” are:

Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Among the Hidden, Among the Hidden’s 1st book revolves around survival, love, and friendship. As a reader, I felt that the plot was unexpected.

When my cousin passed away I didn't really want to believe it till we had to go to his mumureal and go to his grave a couple years later and I remember how his grave looks,were everything was, and also the last thing we did together,much like when Sal lost her mom she didn't believe it till she saw it with her own eyes.In the novel Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech one of an important setting to Sal is her mom's grave,her being jealous,and remembering her favorite stuff, and taking her time at the grave.

In the short coming of age story “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing, the author utilizes peer pressure to show the fear of growing up. In the beginning of the story, the bay represents freedom to Jerry. “He went out fast over the gleaming sand, over a middle region where rocks lay like discolored monsters under the surface, and then he was in the real sea—a warm sea where irregular cold currents from the deep water shocked his limbs.”(Lessing) Being out alone in the middle of a dangerous bay makes Jerry feel more mature than when they arrived to the vacation. The reader feels happy for Jerry. Later in the story, he finds out that the supposedly alone bay has other visitors, foreign boys who clearly have been there before. We know that they've been there before because

In “Through the Tunnel,” Doris Lessing presents water as a deadly challenge to the boy, Jerry. He experiences two of the listed symptoms after freediving; “That night, his nose bleed badly. For hours he had been underwater, learning to hold his breath, and now he felt weak and dizzy” (Lessing 405) and “... his face turned up to the air. He was gasping like a fish. He felt he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock” (Lessing 407). Water challenges him on his quest to adulthood and Jerry then experiences rebirth as a man; water is symbolizing

Bravery, courageous behavior or character, is one trait shown by Jerry, in the short story, Through the Tunnel, written by Doris Lessing. The theme of bravery is important in this story because it shows the characteristics of Jerry in an appealing perspective. This makes him seem very brave, or heroic. The first way this short story shows the theme of bravery is when the author writes, “he knew that now, this moment, when his nose had only just stopped bleeding, when his head was still sore and throbbing - this was the moment he would try.” This shows the theme of bravery because even though he was inflicted with agonizing pain, he had the dauntlessness to keep going.

Dalai Lama once said that, “Without the human community one single human being cannot survive”. The Street by Octavio Paz and an excerpt from Through the Tunnel by Doris Lessing emphasizes a human’s need for the community by explaining a person doesn’t want to be alone in the world. Instead, they want to be seen and accepted. Lessing states in the text that the main character, Jerry, wanted “to be with them, of them, [with] a craving that filled his whole body”. This piece of textual evidence demonstrates that it is the human nature of Jerry to not want to be alone, but to crave to be a part of a community.