In the story “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing, she writes a story about a boy Jerry and his quest to swim through the tunnel. The story may seem normal at first, and may even seem like a quest, but like many authors Lessing has encoded explicit messages and meanings within her story in order to express deeper meaning. Lessing does this in the piece “Through the Tunnel” using imagery to express the hidden explicit message. As Lessing wrote, “They were big boys - men, to Jerry. … He felt he was accepted and he dived again, carefully, proud of himself.” (3) Therefore, Lessing suggests in the text that by Jerry completing this task Jerry would obtain manhood because the only thing that signifies the boys as men to Jerry is that they’re diving
