Comparison Of Sixteen By Maureen Daly And Through The Tunnel By Doris Lessing

In “Sixteen” by Maureen Daly and in “Through the Tunnel” by Doris Lessing, both of the main characters struggle through an internal struggle, which nearly destroys them both. Let me dive into more detail about this. In “Sixteen”, we follow a naïve teenage girl of the age, you guessed it, of sixteen. Despite trying to prove to us that she isn’t a dumb kid, she does the opposite and proves she is that dumb kid she worries she is. I’m sixteen and even I know she’s ignorant and hasn’t suffered like I have through life. This is her moment discovering life isn’t a fairytale, it sucks. Surprise! Meanwhile, in another coming-of-age story, a foreign boy discovers the same lesson after no longer being sheltered. Now for the internal part of these situations.
The Girl (the main character in “Sixteen”) believes that she and a popular boy are falling for each other in a one-sided relationship that unfairly turns the popular boy into an antagonist and cries herself to sleep like the naïve brat she is.
She’s literally Taylor Swift if this is based on a true story of the girl writing this, and while there’s a more than proper term to use, I will instead say she “whines” and moans about how the popular boy was such a misleading condescending tool, when she is in reality and just doesn’t know it. I don’t know about you, but she DEFINITELY is not 22. Anyways, back to the other story, “Through the Tunnel”. While “The Girl” created her own internal struggle out of desperateness for love, The Boy (the main character of ”Through the Tunnel”) creates his own little reality out of desperateness for acceptance. The boy ends up hurting himself with his fabricated reality of “if I go through the tunnel, I’m going to be loved and accepted as a mature and tough kid”, which the foreign boys most likely wouldn’t even do in the first place. Lack of communication is the same in these two parallel main characters. If only The Boy was the very same in The Girl’s story, they could accept and be loved by each other, cancelling out each other’s near same
problems. However, as my title suggests, life simply isn’t a fairytale. You can say “If only…” as much as you’d like, but that won’t change anything. Sadly, through both rites of passages, The Boy and The Girl must learn to grow up and learn that their perceptions aren’t reality, they are just that, Perceptions. They need to learn to communicate and not do anything stupid and to grow up. It’s too tough a world to stay young and innocent forever. At some point, you have to grow up, take life’s punches, and fight back for what you want as long as it’s rational. I believe the boy definitely has a chance at growing up, as he is young (probably twelve) and he faced the challenges and persevered. As for The Girl, who is sixteen and blames all her problems on the boy, I believe she will remain a spoiled little brat and blame all of her problems on the world instead of changing something herself.