Question

reread the portion of "through the tunnel" that describes Jerrys journey through the tunnel.how does the word choice create a sense? your response should be at least 150 words

Answer 1

The word choices for "Through The Tunnel" by Doris Lessing adds a sense of suspense at the climax of the story. The author  selected these words in an attempt to describe the feeling of being underwater, inside a dark tunnel. The author expresses the urgency of where Jerry is by using words that described how dark it was in the tunnel and water.

We first know what the tunnel and the water looks like ("He was in a small rock-bound hole filled with yellowish-gray water" and immediately after, how it felt ("The roof  was sharp and pained his back", "it felt slimy as well as sharp"). The author even describes how Jerry felt, and how taxing the journey was on his body ("His head  was swelling, his lungs cracking"). This, combined with Jerry's countdown of him holding this breath, expressed the limited time Jerry had before he could no longer hold his breath to provide an overall exciting but extreme sense of danger.