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A Hero's Journey In Through The Tunnel By Doris Lessing

722 Words3 Pages

"Through the Tunnel" by Doris Lessing illustrates the journey of a young boy named Jerry trying to swim through a tunnel in an ocean rock. In the beginning, Jerry is starting an oceanside vacation with his mother, when he sees the rocky bay, he's immediately intrigued, and the next day he asks his mother if he could go by the rocks. When he gets there, he sees foreign boys swimming around by the rocks. As he dives with them, he notices that they were swimming through an underwater tunnel, and he's immediately determined to do that himself. So, he asks his mother for goggles, and trains his breath vigorously. After hard work and many nose bleeds, he finally does it, and is overrun by positivity after accomplishing the task. This short story gives great messages about determination.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Through the Tunnel" by Doris Lessing demonstrates the parts of a hero's journey. While a young English boy may not be what …show more content…

While at shore, Jerry sees foreign boys with dark skin speaking another language, and is intrigued. In a few moments, Jerry had swam to them, nervousness flowing through him (2). The call to adventure, and also what one would call meeting with the mentor, occurs next, as Jerry witnesses the foreign boys diving and swimming through a tunnel in the water. While he doesn't get a mentor, necessarily, the boys are the ones who first introduced him to this idea. Immediately, he wants to go with them, but then there is a slight refusal of the call when Jerry suddenly realizes that the boys could be drowning. "They must all be drowning beneath him, in the watery caves of the rock!" (3). However, they do come back up and promptly leave, and this is when crossing the threshold occurs, and Jerry is determined to swim through the

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