"Through the Tunnel" is a short story written by Doris Lessing, a Birtish-Zimbabwean author. The story first appeared in The New Yorker in 1955, and was republished two years later in her critically acclaimed collection, The Habit of Loving. The story is an excellent example of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age narrative, in which the sheltered Jerry and his overprotective mother are on a vacation in which Jerry is faced with a situation in which he must choose to retreat to the world of his mother, or become his own person, pursuing his own desires.
The story is informed by Lessing's experience living in the apartheid regimes of the British colonies in south-Saharan Africa. Lessing...
