The story is about an eleven-year-old boy, Jerry, who caught in the difficult position of being neither a child nor an adult. On a winter holiday Jerry with his mother in a foreign country, he encountered some older boys swimming. When they disappear by swimming through a tiny underwater passageway to the other side of a large rock in the ocean, he felt left out and rejected. Jerry made it his goal to find the passageway and swim through it. Jerry spent the rest of his vacation away from his mother; he always goes to the bay every day and trains his lung for the swim. Every day when Jerry meets his mother at the Villa, she would ask him if he enjoyed himself but he always response tersely and give her a “yes”. He has never told her about the tunnel. As a result of harsh training for Jerry, he experienced a nosebleed, her mother told him not to overdo things. She then forced him to take the next day off and stay with her at the beach. Jerry was annoyed by the decision and later he decided that he had to go swim through the tunnel when he gained his composure. Finally, Jerry reached his goal, tough he had put his hearth at risk.
Main character: “Jerry”
The main character of our story is the eleven-year-old boy, Jerry. Jerry was an intelligent boy who pushes his limits to try to find out who he really is. Beside, Jerry was a risk taker. Jerry put his own hearth at risk. Also, he put his mother at risk because, if he had not succeeded on his quest to swim through the tunnel, his mother would have lost the only bit of family she had left. Jerry was a determined boy that he could do things on his own and does not allow anyone or anything to stop him. Jerry is also a self confident boy, he knew he had the ability to swim through the tunnel and he worked hard until he succeeded or reached his goal.
Settings:
The setting in time of our story is Winter season. It was implied in the story that Jerry and his mother were living in a foreign country during a winter holiday.
The setting in place for our story is the “safe beach" where Jerry's mother uses to stay and "the bay" where Jerry use to spend his time training himself to swim through the tunnel.