Summary
After a day spent at the sandy beach with his mother, Jerry returns to the rocky bay the next day without asking permission. He continues to train his lungs to hold his breath underwater for even longer. He studies his surroundings underwater and becomes intimately familiar with the rock, the sand, and the hole through which he wants to swim.
His mother tells him that they will be leaving in four days, and Jerry decides that the day before they are to leave is the day he will swim through the hole. Two days before their departure, Jerry's nose begins to bleed profusely as he practices. He resolves to stop, and try again next year, but is compelled to quickly reject that idea and instead attempt the feat in that very moment.
He tightens his goggles and dives down to the hole. He squeezes himself in while counting the number of seconds he has been holding his breath. He can no longer see anything, and he gropes his way along the tunnel that is both sharp and slimy against his back. At one point, he sees a crack in the rock and the sunlight comes through. He imagines that the sunlight is air he can inhale, as his lungs are desperate to breathe again. Out in front of him is nothing but blackness, and he realizes that he has no choice but to keep kicking his way forward.
He reaches the open sea and floats to the surface, where he exhaustedly tears off his goggles. He realizes that his nose had been bleeding and his goggles had filled with blood. As he gasps for air, he sees the local boys diving, but he no longer desires to play with him. Instead, he wants only to return to the villa and lie down.
Later that day, his mother returns to find him injured and exhausted. He boasts that he can hold his breath for almost three minutes. She cautions him not to overdo it and to refrain from swimming anymore that day. Jerry agrees immediately, no longer feeling compelled to go to the bay.
Analysis
In this final section of the story, the author pays particular attention to the strangeness, foreignness, and fear associated with Jerry's journey through the underwater tunnel. The seascape that he has studied in preparation for so long becomes instantly unfamiliar as he pushes himself through the hole and loses his sense of sight. "He was being continually pressed against the sharp roof," the narrator says, "which felt slimy as well as sharp. Again he thought of octopuses, and wondered if the tunnel might be filled with weed that could tangle him. He gave himself a panicky, convulsive kick forward, ducked his head, and swam" (8). Here, the story underscores how even despite all of Jerry's preparation and training of his lungs, the journey through the tunnel is still marked by labor, uncertainty, and unpredictability. The only aspect of the journey that propels Jerry forward is the fact that he can no longer go backward. In this way, the story frames the figurative transition from childhood to adulthood as often dangerous and confusing, but nonetheless inevitable and necessary.
When Jerry finally emerges into the open sea, he is marked by his treacherous feat: his nose has bled so much that it has filled up his goggles, and he has banged his head and been scratched on his back from being pressed against the ceiling of the tunnel. These marks serve as physical reminders of the journey, and by extension represent the trials one must face as they progress to adulthood. Notably, however, once Jerry is safely on the shore again, his compulsion to swim through the tunnel or to join the community of local boys disappears. Instead, he desires rest and his mother's company. That the story ends on this note suggests that in accomplishing the long-desired feat, Jerry has developed a stronger and more established sense of self—so much so that he no longer feels the need to prove his worth to others or test his strength in other ways. As such, the story ultimately argues that the transition from childhood to adulthood is one marked by extreme challenges and unrelenting difficulty, but that on the other side of that transition comes the maturity to retrospectively appreciate one's childhood.
