The writer makes Jerry out to be abit of a loner with no or a little amount of friends, desperate for the attention and approval of other and not really enjoying the company of his mother. The writer shows this by Jerry having a negative attitude to his mum, by making Jerry cry when the bigger teenage kids ignore him when he is trying so hard to get them to pay attention and accept him.
Jerry makes faces towards his mother because he doesn’t really want to hang around with her he wants to explore around and meet some new people on his own. But he doesn’t want to be rude and upset his mother by telling his mum that he doesn’t want to hang around her. So Jerry is more subtle about it and makes faces to hint he doesn’t want to hang around her so she eventually asks Jerry if he wants to do something else and meet back up at home later in the day.
When the bigger teenage kids first meet Jerry they are friendly to him and let him join in with them jumping in off the rock into the water. But when Jerry starts trying to hard by doing stupid things that aren’t funny the teenage kids begin to ignore him and walk away leaving Jerry by himself. Then Jerry starts crying because they don’t like him.
Jerry’s goals change throughout the story at the start his goal is to try and make friends with the bigger teenage kids. But when the bigger kids don’t like him his goal changes to trying to find and get through the tunnel under the water leading to the other side of the rock barrier. Once he achieves this he realizes how dangerous it was and how it wasn’t worth it.
In this story Jerry learnt not to try to hard to be like someone else or to try and get someone to like you. So Jerry knows not to be a sheep anymore doing something just because other people were doing