Through the Tunnel

Through the Tunnel

There are four modes to which Through the Tunnel can fall under; tragedy,comedy, romance, or irony. I believe it falls under romance.

Tragedy could be defined as a character who is brought down by a powerful force such as fate or a downfall, most of the time it ends in a death . In Through the tunnel I don't find tragedy present. There is a scene were Jerry dived into the water to try and find an opening to a cave and Eventually, he finds it and intents to go through it. He starts to go through it but gets frightened with the seaweed, imagining that tentacles of an octopus were touching him . Jerry got scared but in doing so he decides to set a goal. A goal to go through the gap. He decides to exercise his lungs, so everyday he would go underwater and hold his breath as if his life depended on it, and every night his nose would bleed. Then one day he finally decides to dive into the water and find the gap. Jerry even thinks to himself that if he died he would lie there until one day the boys would find the entrance to be blocked. At the end of the story Jerry held his breath for more than 100 seconds, and when he comes up to the surface he was gasping like a fish. Therefore reaching his goal by finding the cave and going through it but not without narrowly escaping death!

Comedy is the opposite of tragedy it usually contains a character that is very humorous and the story usually ends happily. Well in Through the tunnel that is not the case! In the beginning Jerry seems bored of the usual routine with his mother so he decides to do something new and goes down to the bay. There he finds boys diving. He then becomes happy when the big boys invited him to dive with them, he felt accepted and gained a little bit of pride when taking his place in line,to dive. After a while the boys dive down into a cave. But Jerry ended up not following them so in his failure he decides to kick and splash like a dog they eventually end up leaving him. After that he became serious and set a goal to overcome his failure! Therefore Jerry is a sort of lonesome character that seems dependent of his mother,but at the same time wants to be independent and in process becoming serious about reaching his goal. In the end he doesn't seemed too stoked about what he did because he mostly keeps everything to himself.

When something is said but has a totally different meaning could be described as irony. I personally do not think the story falls under irony because the author is not saying anything that could have another meaning. Everything in the story was as it was. The main thing Jerry was experiencing was a internal conflict.

When you think of romance you usually think of a night in shining armor winning the heart of a princess or a Romeo or Juliet theme, well this