"Through the Tunnel" is a short story written by British author Doris Lessing, originally published in the American weekly magazine The New Yorker in 1955.
The story tells the adventures of Jerry, a young English boy, and his widowed mother who are on a vacation at a beach to which they have come many times in the past. Jerry and his mother try to please each other and not to impose too many demands. The mother is “determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in devotion,” and Jerry, in turn, acts from an “unfailing impulse of contrition — a sort of nobility.”
<u>In "Through the Tunnel", the actual passage through the rock tunnel becomes a coming-of-age passage for Jerry. Having accomplished his challenge, he returns to his mother's company, satisfied and confident of the future.</u> He does not feel it necessary to tell his mother of the monumental obstacle that he has overcome.
The tunnel in the story can best be said to be symbolic of the:
obstacles in life that lead to maturity
