Though the following essay does not discuss "Through the Tunnel" explicitly, Hanson does discuss Lessing's approach to short fiction, which she characterizes as the "free story, " in which the narrative is not especially driven by plot or guided to a conclusion by the author. These stylistic aspects are both present in "Through the Tunnel. "

Lessing's short fiction falls into the general category of the "free story," a term coined by Elizabeth Bowen to describe the kind of fiction that she and writers such as V. S. Pritchett were writing in the years immediately following the modernist period. The free story has been the dominant type of short story or fiction produced in this country over the last fifty years and has been much favoured by novelists who have also been attracted to the short form. The freedom of the free story consists primari1y in its potential...