Through the Tunnel” Doris May Lessing

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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
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