In life, any great story always has a background story - one that describes past hardships, demotivation or thoughts of complete failure. Somewhere amidst the negative, however, comes a positive stimulus, known as an awakening. Typically, at the time of an awakening, the change or realization being proposed is hard to accept, but somewhere deep down, one can feel that despite all the hard times they have gone through, something wonderful is yet to come. Kevin Wilson, the author of Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, does a fantastic job illustrating several awakenings that happen in the short stories in his collection. Wilson defines an awakening moment in the short stories “Birds in the House,” “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth,” and
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The narrator and two of his friends, Amy and Hunter, just graduated college with uncommon degrees such as “Gender Studies and Canadian History and Morse Code” (93). Weeks after graduation, they remained unemployed and under the influence of marijuana most of the time. One day they all unite on one central idea of what they wanted to do with their lives — dig. So they begin, and for months, stayed underground, digging and collecting different items from the past that had been buried. They dug different rooms to give each other space when needed and met in a central location when they wanted human interaction. The tunnel started in the narrator’s backyard, and his parents provided them with the essentials they would need, such as, for example food, new shovels, water, etc. As time went by, the parents of the narrator begin to worry, saying that they needed to come out of the tunnel; that winter was approaching. The narrator even says - “My parents were providing only the bare essentials now; it was hard to support three kids, especially when only one of them was their own” (102). So eventually, Amy and Hunter decided that they were ready to move on and gave their regards to the narrator, who decided to stay underground. A few nights later, his parents came to the mouth of the tunnel and expressed how his friends had called, worried that they might have disappointed him and would be willing to come back and continue digging. The narrator confided to his parents that his friends did not disappoint him; he just did not know whether he was ready to continue life above ground. After some convincing from his parents, the narrator grabbed his shovel and a bag of dirt and ended his tunnel fetish. From then on, the three friends were no longer as close as they use to be: “Hunter was in Alberta, spelunking around in Castleguard Cave… And Amy is getting her Ph.D. in geology and
The narrator and two of his friends, Amy and Hunter, just graduated college with uncommon degrees such as “Gender Studies and Canadian History and Morse Code” (93). Weeks after graduation, they remained unemployed and under the influence of marijuana most of the time. One day they all unite on one central idea of what they wanted to do with their lives — dig. So they begin, and for months, stayed underground, digging and collecting different items from the past that had been buried. They dug different rooms to give each other space when needed and met in a central location when they wanted human interaction. The tunnel started in the narrator’s backyard, and his parents provided them with the essentials they would need, such as, for example food, new shovels, water, etc. As time went by, the parents of the narrator begin to worry, saying that they needed to come out of the tunnel; that winter was approaching. The narrator even says - “My parents were providing only the bare essentials now; it was hard to support three kids, especially when only one of them was their own” (102). So eventually, Amy and Hunter decided that they were ready to move on and gave their regards to the narrator, who decided to stay underground. A few nights later, his parents came to the mouth of the tunnel and expressed how his friends had called, worried that they might have disappointed him and would be willing to come back and continue digging. The narrator confided to his parents that his friends did not disappoint him; he just did not know whether he was ready to continue life above ground. After some convincing from his parents, the narrator grabbed his shovel and a bag of dirt and ended his tunnel fetish. From then on, the three friends were no longer as close as they use to be: “Hunter was in Alberta, spelunking around in Castleguard Cave… And Amy is getting her Ph.D. in geology and