Unaware of what Jerry had been doing out of her sight at the rocky bay, his mother is only able to notice the injuries that he sustained while swimming through the tunnel. In such stories the protagonist not only undergoes a physical change, but also experiences psychological change. For day one, Jerry’s mother decides to take him to the safe beach and just relax on the soft, glowing sand. Learn through the tunnel with free interactive flashcards. As they walk to the beach and Jerry sees the rocky bay, there is both a physical and metaphorical fork in the path: the beach is tame and familiar, while the rocky bay is rugged and unknown. It is up to us, however, how we go about overcoming them. The biggest boy dives into the water and doesn’t come up. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Through the Tunnel, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. As an only child, Jerry feels some responsibility for looking after his widowed mother, just as she feels the need to keep him safe at all times. All of the documents are alterable so that you can tailor them for your purposes. “He must go on into the blackness ahead, or he would drown. When Jerry first encounters the older boys on the rocky beach, he is needy, immature, and desperate. His increased ability to hold his breath has proved that there is something tangible to be earned from his otherwise hard-to-describe feeling of growing independence. He does not feel it necessary to tell his mother of the monumental obstacle that he has overcome. As Jerry deliberates between following his mother’s arm, still bright white from a lack of exposure to the sun, and the rocky bay, he is also contemplating whether to stay with his comfortable routines or explore a new territory. From the opening sentence, there are two initial thematic splits in the story: one between Jerry and his mother, another between the overcrowded beach and the rocky bay. Jerry is tempted again on this second day to follow his mother out of a guilty sense of duty but ultimately can’t contain his desire to explore. (including. It was taking a step out into the world to him. His mother again wants to protect him from the potential threats of the “wild-looking place” but also wants to grant him some degree of independence as he gets older. There was no one visible; under him, in the water, the dim shapes of the swimmers had disappeared. His head was swelling, his lungs cracking. As soon as they realize he is a foreigner, though, they forget about him, but he is happy just to be among them. While there, he finally understands that he has outgrown the doting care of his mother and has grown to have more autonomy than ever before. Looking back to shore, Jerry sees some boys strip off their clothes and go running down to the rocks, and he swims toward them but keeps his distance. He was no longer quite conscious.” Even when he surfaces, he fears “he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock.”. Discussion of themes and motifs in Doris Lessing's Through the Tunnel. It was an enjoyable book about a foster girl and her twin brother. Let me read you a story! Our. And yet the fact that she is a widow is mentioned exactly one time. He resolves to wait until the day before he leaves when his mother says they will be gone in four days, but an impulse overtakes him two days beforehand, and he feels that he must make his attempt immediately — now or never. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.”. Unable to communicate with the boys, he will have to teach himself if he hopes to be able to do as they do. Safe … By studiously surveying the details of the tunnel, Jerry is making a place that was once quite foreign to him into one that is quite familiar. He wanted to be free and become a man. Directed by Durand Adams, Charles Clapsaddle. Space travel 8. Jerry is a calm and collected person; he… With this, Jerry has been definitively rejected from their small community, by dint of a gap in physical ability as well as their disdain for him as an outsider. His conscientious mother sends him on his way with what she hopes is a casual air, and Jerry leaves behind the crowded “safe beach” where he has always played. Jerry dived, shot past the school of underwater swimmers, saw a black wall of rock looming at him, touched it, and bobbed up at once to the surface, where the wall was a low barrier he could see across. As determined as he is to fulfill his self-determined rite of passage of swimming through the tunnel, Jerry’s nervousness and shaky confidence make him seem to revert, at least partially, to his earlier child-like state of fear when he first began exploring the tunnel. In a separate step after the concrete invert, the paver will be driven through the tunnel again to form a walkway on one side and a cable duct chamber on the other using conventional techniques. Through the tunnel is a moving and insightful account of the author's personal battle from hopelessness to freedom in Christ. In "Through the Tunnel" by Dorris Lessing, many of the places in the story are symbolic of Jerry's passage from childhood to adulthood.