Doris Lessing at the Wikipedia
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