"Through the Tunnel" Jerry swims, pushing his way through the curious dark depths as his life slowly slips through his childish fingers. Doris Lessing, the author of this short story, depicts the rite of passage that Jerry takes. The underwater tunnel symbolizes Jerry's rite of passage into a new stage of his life. He went from tagging along with his mother to the beach every day to exploring a cove where challenges await him, only him. Through bloody noses, and breath taking drills, Jerry prepares himself to swim through that mysterious tunnel to cure his curiosity.
             Jerry and his mother are attached at the hip early on in the story. Every time Jerry tries to slip away from his mother, a surge of guilt sweeps over him as she smiles, "he was very familiar with that anxious, apologetic smile"(page 375 Lessing). Finally, Jerry is able to leave his mother's side and explore the "wild and rock bay"(page 375 Lessing) that his curiosity has drawn him to. As he plays by himself, swimming and diving in the wild and rocky bay, a group of older boys, men to him, that speak a different language came to play in that bay. As they dive in and disappear for minutes, Jerry wonders where they are, what's taking them so long, and what if they drowned beneath the glassy surface. He begins counting the seconds they're gone, and eventually they rise, breaking the water's surface. Curious to what took them so long, he journeys' down to the floor and find's a dark tunnel. Afraid to swim through, he comes back to the surface in defeat. As the older boys leave him in disappointment, Jerry cries, alone on the rock. The tunnel was the only way those boys would have stayed with him, played with him, kept him company in this foreign bay. To redeem himself, his confidence, and faith, he knew he must swim through that tunnel. Every day of his vacation t
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