Through the Tunnel, by Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing at the Wikipedia

Through the Tunnel at the Wikipedia

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Through the Tunnel, summary & analysis

BIOGRAPHY

Doris Lessing was born in Iran in 1919. At that moment, Iran was under the rule of Great Britain. Her father was a bank clerk and her mother a nurse. When she was 5, her family moved to Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe, but then also under the British Empire. There she lived until she was 30. Her family had a farm, but not much money, and she went to a catholic school. At 15, she started working as a nursemaid. At 19, she got married and had two children, but she left her husband and her children. Afterwards, she said, “There’s nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend an endless amount of time with small children.” But she got married again and had one more son, and she divorced again. She left also Rhodesia and went to live in the UK, fed up with the classicism and racism of the African country.

All her life was a committed person with leftist politics, and until the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, she belonged to the Communist Party.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.

When the critics talk about her writings, they usually distinguish three periods:

The Communist period, when she wrote mainly about social issues. Her African Stories, for example, belong to this phase.

The psychological period, when she wrote Children of Violence (a collection of five semi-autobiographical novels),  and The Golden Notebook, that is in fact a revision of these 5 novels.

The Sufi period, when she studied the Muslim mysticism called Sufi and when she wrote science-fiction novels, for example, the series Canopus in Argus.

Out of these periods we found The Good Terrorist, about the squatters in London.

Her work is sometimes wearisomely didactic and focused more about topics than about form.

She is considered a feminist writer, although she doesn’t like being labelled.

She died in 2013 in London, when she was 93.

If you'd like to know more about her life, you can read her autobiography Under my Skin, in two volumes of more of 400 pages each one.

Through the Tunnel This is a story about an eleven-year-old boy on holiday on the coast with his widow mother. Every year they go there, and sunbathe and swim on the same big beach, but now he feels boring spending the time with his mother on this beach, because he thinks he has grown up, and this big and safe beach is for small children and mothers. So he decides to explore a cove near the big beach. There he sees some boys doing feats of old boys or adults; for example, they dive to the sea from a high rock, or swim under a long rock. The boys ignore him, because when he sees that he cannot do the same as them, he behaves like a child. Then, when he’s alone, he studies the passage under the long rock that they have crossed, and tries to cross it too. But it’s very long and dark. He’s going to need some goggles and is going to have to practise his breathing… because he’s decided to go through the tunnel whatever happens. Is he going to get it at the end?

QUESTIONS

Why do you think the author talks about the “woman’s arm” instead of talking simply about the “woman”?

In the lines 20-21 we find the expression “impulse of contrition – a sort of chivalry”. How can you identify contrition with chivalry?

There are two beaches: the big one and the small cove or ravine. It seems that the big beach is for children and the ravine for adults. What characteristics does the author give to each one in order to identify the big one with children and the rocky ravine with adultness?

What kind of relationship is there between the mother and her son?

Jerry tries to talk to the group of boys that are having a swim; but they speak the local language and Jerry doesn’t. How difficult is to make friends with someone who speaks a different language? Do children and young people make friends more easily than mature people?

The gang of local boys have a leader. Do all the gangs have to have a leader? What are the qualities that a leader has to have (according to your opinion)?

There is a moment when Jerry acts out a foolish dog. Why do you think he reacts like this?

Jerry asks (in fact, demands) for some goggles and wants to have them immediately. What is the best way to behave in front of a demanding child?

Do you think that every child needs, in order to grow up, to get through a rite of passage?

The narrator says, “He would do it if it killed him”. Do you think this is a sign of maturity? Was his a sensible decision?

Why, when he could be a member of the gang, “he did not want them”?

It seems that the mother was unconscious of the dangers her child was in. Are we usually aware of the dangers our children are in?

What do you think is the meaning of the blood filling the goggles in relation to coming of age?

Why wasn’t Jerry’s mother impressed when he told her he could stay for more than two minutes under water?

VOCABULARY

blurted out, villa, worrying off, scoop, inlets, surf, craving, poised, bog, blank, feat, nagged, sequins, groped, frond, dizzy, overdo, weed, gout, scooped, glazed looking

The Rocking-Horse Winner, by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence at the Wikipedia

The Rocking-Horse Winner at the Wikipedia

A Summary and Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner

The Rocking-Horse Winner Study Guide

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D. H. LAWRENCE, by Adriana Cruz

BIOGRAPHY

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, his birth name, was born in Eastwood,

England, the 11th of September 1885, and he died in Vence, France, on the 2nd of March 1930 (the cause of death was tuberculosis). He was married to Frida von Richthofen, a German literate.

Lawrence was an English writer, author of novels, poems, plays, essays, short stories, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His literature exposes an extensive reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Lawrence views on all these matters caused him many personal problems. As a consequence, he had to spend most of his life in voluntary exile, which he himself called a “wild pilgrimage”. Among his most notable works there are Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He got distinctions like the James Tait Black Award.

In his childhood, he studied at Beauvale Board School, becoming the first local student to win a county council scholarship to Nottingham High School.

He also studied at the University of London, where served as a teacher and received a teaching diploma in 1908. In the autumn of the same year, Lawrence left the home of his youth for London, although he continued to work as a teacher for a few more years.

Lawrence had a very close relationship with his mother. 

He had an affair with a married woman six years older than him with three small children, and they flew to Freida’s parents’ home in Metz. Afterwards, they got married.

He spent the rest of his life travelling in the company of his wife around several countries. Finally, they arrived in the United States in September 1922, where they met Mabel Dodge Luhan, a public figure, and contemplated establishing a utopian community on what was then Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico.

They acquired the property, known today as the D. H. Lawrence Ranch.

 

SUMMARY

The story tells of a middle-class family with three children (a boy and two girls), who live in a good house with a garden, with discreet servants. Although so that everyone could notice, they kept up appearances. The mother is haunted by a sense of failure, always thinking that she needs more than she has. Her husband did not earn as much as she wanted and the life he would like to have with her luxuries and extravagance. Her children feel this anxiety, even claiming they can hear the house whisper, “There must be more money.”
The boy Paul was playing with his wooden horse in search of luck and ordered his horse to take him where the luck is.
Basset, the gardener, told him about horse racing and the two became partners.
One day, the boy is questioned by his uncle on the subject, and he is surprised when he tells him the name of the winner. Uncle Oscar, intrigued, asks how he knows who will win, but Paul tells him that he only knows who wins and doesn’t tell him his secret. That’s how the guy finds out about his earnings and successes.
Uncle Oscar Cresswell becomes a partner with them. The boy and Bassett make huge bets on the horses Paul names.
When Paul decides to give the mother a gift of £1,000, on her every birthday, for five years, so that he can ease her commitments, but only makes her spend more.
Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be “lucky.” As the Derby draws near, Paul is determined to meet the winner.
The mother, returning from a party, discovers his secret; She has spent hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night, until he “arrives”, in a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner’s name.
Her uncle and the Gardener bet and won big on the investment of 14 to 1 of everything he had.
The mother now had a lot of money, but she did not have her son.

The boy told his mother, “Mom, I’ll ever leave you: I’m lucky”.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters:

Paul
His mother
His father
His uncle
The gardener
Why do you think the mother couldn’t love her children?
Do you think money can make happiness?
And what about luck? Can it make you happy?
Being lucky is something that depends on the causality, or can you do something to be lucky? Remember the saying “Fortuna helps the brave”.
Are you pro or against lotteries? Why?
Paul’s mother became unlucky when she got married? Do you think marriage can change people so much?
Mantra is a commonly repeated word or phrase, especially in advocacy or for motivation. In the story we can find two or more mantras (“There must be more money”, “I want luck”). Do you think mantras can be useful or effective? (Perhaps you remember old people saying the rosary.)
Why do you think uncle Oscar is lucky?
Do you believe in intuitions or hunches?
The mother got some money for her birthday. Was she happy then? Why?
Does our childhood determine the way we are as adults?
Some interpretations of this story say that the boy has the Oedipal complex and that his rocking on the horse is like a kind of masturbation. What is your opinion about this interpretation?
What is the symbolic meaning of the story according to your point of view?

VOCABULARY

thrust, grinding, racked, champing, smirking, pram, brazening it out, peer, careered, steed, batman, blade, sport, honour bright, daffodil, romancer, fiver, spinning yarns, writs, writhed, drapers, sequins, overwrought, quaint, prance, uncanny, Master, as right as a trivet, tossing 

Who Dealt, by Ring Lardner

Ring Lardner at the Wikipedia

Ring Lardner, by Sílvia Brunet

BIOGRAPHY

Ringgold William "Ring" Lardner (1885 -1933) was an American sports columnist and satirical short story writer who enjoyed poking fun at revered institutions such as marriage, theatre, and sports. His works were admired by his contemporaries, renowned authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and J.D. Salinger.

Born in Niles, Michigan, the youngest of nine children in a wealthy family, Lardner knew he wanted to be a newspaper man early on. In childhood he wore a brace for his deformed foot until he was eleven. As a teenager, he began work at the South Bend Tribune, then moved on to the South Bend Times, before moving to Chicago where in 1913, he published a syndicated column in the Chicago Tribune, titled "In the Wake of the News." It was carried by over 100 newspapers.

Lardner married Ellis Abbot in 1911.They had four sons, all of whom became professional writers. His son James Lardner was killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting with the International Brigades.

In 1916, Lardner published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, a collection of fictional letters by a bush-league baseball player, loaded with satire about athletics' propensity for stupidity and greed. Some of the letters were published as short stories in The Saturday Evening Post the same year. Lardner's love for writing about the game faded after the "Black Sox Scandal" when the Chicago White Sox sold out the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Lose with a Smile (1933) was his last published collection of fictional baseball writings.

In addition to sports, Lardner admired the theatre, and co-wrote a three-act play which made it to Broadway, called Elmer The Great, with the legendary George M. Cohan.

Lardner died on September 25, in 1933, at the age of 48 in East Hampton, New York, of a heart attack due to complications from tuberculosis.

WHO DEALT?

The story “Who Dealt?” by Ring Lardner was written in 1925. It is written in first person. The story happens while two young couples are playing bridge. The characters are the Cannon couple (Tom and the narrator -we don’t know the name) and the Gratz couple (Arthur and Helen) who are the hosts.

The narrator is Mrs Cannon who is talking and talking all the time during the bridge game, about her life and other matters in an innocent and silly way. During her speech we began to know information about the four characters.

First of all, we know that Tom and, Arthur and Helen were real friends all their life. And there was a special friendship between Tom and Helen when they were kids. We also know, that the Cannon were married three months ago and the Gratz were married four years ago. She knows that Helen is a good singer. And she explains that Tom is abstaining from alcoholic beverages since they were married. She says that Tom is a secretive person. She continued talking about Tom experience with horrid football people at Yale, about their honeymoon in Chicago, about clothes, about the possibility of Tom to run for mayor thanks to the Guthrie couple, about how was Mrs Guthrie… Meanwhile, she was very bad playing cards, but she doesn’t mind.

There’s a point in the story when all seems to change, is when she begins to talk about the relation with her husband Tom. She starts saying that she and Tom are made for each other and agree in everything, but not in music, not in cultural matters, not in things to eat… She continues explaining us that she broke some Tom’s habits like big breakfast or taking his shoes off when he gets home, or changing the nightgown to a pajamas…

The tension is in crescendo when she confesses that Tom is an author, because she had found a sad poem dated four years ago and it was about other girl. And she explains too, he has written a story about two men and a girl which they were all brought up together. One man was rich, and popular like Arthur, and the other was an ordinary man like Tom, with no money, but the girl like him and promised to wait for him. She got tired waiting the poor man and married the rich one. The Tom story ends when they meet again and they pretend everything was all right, but his heart was broken.

The culminant point is when Mrs Cannon starts to recite Tom’s sad poem and the characters feel reflected on it.

In that moment Helen revoked in the game and Tom starts drinking Scotch again!

I wonder if Mrs Cannon is as innocent and silly as it seems…

QUESTIONS

Talk about the different people (job, the way they play cards, financial situation, hobbies, sports, studies, habits, clothes… anything you know about them)

The narrator Mrs Cannon

Tom Cannon

Arthur Gratz

Helen Gratz

Ted Jones

Ken Baker

Gertie Baker

A.L. Guthrie

Mrs Guthrie

Mr Hastings

What is a real friend for you? How do you know when a friend is a real friend? Do you think a real friend has to be a friend from your childhood, or you can make friends at any period of your life?

What is your opinion about boasting of children/husband/wife?

Would the narrator be a good detective, as she said of herself?

Do you know this saying, “You don’t know a person until you’ve travelled with them”? I think there is another one as good as this: “You don’t know a person until you’ve been a partner in a card game with them”. What do you think?

Do you like poetry? What kind of poetry do you read? What is your opinion about Tom’s poem in the story?

What is the meaning of the last sentence, “Why, Tom!”

What do these names refer to?

Black Oxen

Bryn Mawr

Irving Berlin

Gershwin

Jack Kearns

Humoresque

Indian Love Lyrics

Ed Wynn

The Fool

Lightnin’

Robert Chambers

Irving R. Cobb

VOCABULARY

on the wagon, drop, limelight, dumb, fooled, raved, worm things out, nine, half-back, tackle, had it in for, whose lead?, odd, wild, put on the Ritz, dummy, overbids, raise, run for mayor, lumbermen, janitor, it's all apple sauce, bashful, ace, sloppy, mushiest, T.L., pull, bell-boy, lobby, paging, the inside ropes, pull

The Runaway, by Morley Callaghan

Morley Callaghan at the Wikipedia

The Runaway: summary

The Runaway at the "Esquire"

Morley Callaghan, by Roser Gelabert

BIOGRAPHY

Morley Callaghan was born in 1903, in Toronto, into an Irish Roman Catholic family. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1925. During his college years, Callaghan held a summer job as a reporter with the Toronto Daily Star, where he met Ernest Hemingway. The two exchanged stories, and Hemingway encouraged Callaghan in his writing. In 1925 Callaghan enrolled in a law school at Osgoode Hall, in Toronto, and was admitted to the Ontario Bar in 1928, but he did not practice law.

Callaghan’s career as a writer began in 1921, when he sold a descriptive piece to the Toronto Star Weekly. In 1926 published his first story in the Paris magazine, This Quarter and started on his first novel Strange Fugitive, and his stories began to appear regularly in American and European magazines. Callaghan married Loreta Dee in 1929 and went to Paris for eight months. There he was part of the great gathering of writers in Montparnasse that included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce. He recalled this time in a memoir, That Summer in Paris, 1963; in the book he discusses the famous boxing match between himself and Hemingway, and, being Callaghan a better boxer, he knocked Hemingway to the floor.

The 1930s were an active and prolific period for Callaghan. His work was strongly affected by the experiences of the Depression. He published four novels, and he produced a second collection of stories, Now that April’s Here and Other Stories. And wrote two plays in 1939.

During World War II, Callaghan was attached to the Royal Canadian Navy and served on assignment for the National Film Board of Canada. He also become a well-known radio figure.

Callaghan’s novels and short stories are marked by Roman Catholicism, often focusing on individuals whose essential characteristic is a strong but often weakened sense of self.

Callaghan was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1960. In 1982, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

A long time Toronto resident, Callaghan remained independent until the end of his life. He broke a hip in 1989 at the age of 86, but still persisted in walking to his neighbourhood grocery store to do his shopping. He died of natural causes in Toronto on August 25, 1990.

 

THE STORY

The protagonist in this story is an adolescent boy named Michael. He is younger than some of his friends he is much bigger physically. His life is divided between the pleasures of childhood, the problems at home and the pangs of love. Michael's behaviour is affected for these tensions. It is due to these tensions that at first jumps down on the sawdust and the same tension disallows him to jump down the second time, while all other boys are able to do, so he becomes a subject of jeer. Only to stablish his superiority, he goes out to fight with a coloured boy, but then he makes friends with him and finds several qualities in the opponent. He loves his father and also his stepmother, he has a soft corner for his stepmother, but is unable to establish a good relationship with her because she reprimands him, though for his own good. What disturbs him more is that his father and stepmother quarrel all the time, and that makes Michael feel unhappy and sorrowful. He is also ashamed that their hot arguments can be heard by the passers-by and those living in the neighbourhood.

Added to this tension is the fact that he is unable to stablish communication with the girl he loves. He can’t find the right words to talk to her. One of the major reasons for him to decide to escape is when he realizes that she is in a relation with another boy.

He feels trapped in a society where everyone knows everyone and a family where his father had constant arguments with his stepmother.  He wants to be with unknown people, but then he is going to his uncle in the city. Thus, we see that he is suffering from contradictory feelings all the time, unable to decide clearly what he wants.

It is then not a surprise that Michael feels the need to escape, to run away from everybody and visit “places with beautiful names, places like Tia Juana, Woodbine, Saratoga and Blue Bonnets.”

Michael, however, is not an irresponsible guy, he has plans to settle with his uncle in the city he plans to write his agony to his father from the city. The story ends with a wide-open future to the young boy.

 

CONCLUSION

Adolescence is the most difficult stage of life. Teenagers are difficult to manage. They can be very sensitive, perhaps too sensitive on some occasions. They are often contradictory. It is hard to understand what they are going through; and due to this, they are likely to do strange things, which are done by Michael in this story.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters:

>Mike / Michael

>Father

>Mother / Stepmother

>Helen Murray

>Art

Teenagers:

>What characteristics define a teenager?

>What is the meaning of “adolescence”?

>Teenagers now, are they the same they were in “our time”? Why?

>Doing something risky, or difficult, seems to be the typical challenge for teenagers, like a rite of passage. Do you remember some anecdote / story related to it?

>Do you remember any other short stories or novels where the teenagers are the stars, e.g., The Lord of the Flies?

>Do you think Mike’s feelings for his parents reflect the typical teenager feelings for theirs?

Fighting: is it a way to make friends? (Remember The Quiet Man and Women in Love)

Why was Mike worried when his father didn’t go out of the shed?

Why do you think at a moment the narrator says “Heavy clouds were sweeping up from the horizon” (384, 4)? And what about “The moonlight shining on the hay” (390, 2)?

At the end, Mikes to look for the places he mentions because of the beauty of the names: do you know something about the chapter in Proust “Names of countries”?

VOCABULARY

lumberyard, sawdust, whitecaps, stump, yellow, coaxing, fob, lick, humoring, cinder path, flour-and-feed, loafers, crony, glumy, roughcast, shack, coon, snowball's chance, pop, clucking, stoop, woodpecker, pocket, shipyard, dogged, clover