What is the setting and does it have an influence on the story, "Through the Tunnel"?

In Doris Lessing's short story, "Through the Tunnel," the
setting is an unspecified beach in a foreign country that the single British mother and
son visit.  Lessing herself was born in Iran, formerly known as Persia, so Jerry and his
mother may be vacationing on the Meditteranean because the boys speak French.  Perhaps
they are in one of the North Afican countries such as Tunisia or
Algeria. 

At any rate, the bay is described as "wild,"
indicating a setting that is not a civilized one to which "the young English boy" is
accustomed. In fact, the boys on the edge of a small cape that marks the side of the bay
that is away from the usual area for the English boy have stripped and run naked down to
the rocks.  They dive and, significantly, come up on the other side of a big, dark
rock. 

Certainly, the setting of this story is pivotal to
the plot.  For, Jerry, who has been protected by his mother, this setting is extremely
significant as it is his discovery of the rock through which the other boys swim that
leads to his acts of independence.  Once Jerry has seen the wild boy swim through a
tunnel, he is determined to find this passage throught the cave, or tunnel, and swim out
to the other side just as the others have done because he is shamed by their laughter
and their "grave frowning."  Determined to swim through the tunnel, Jerry conditions
himself,

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exercising his lungs as if everything, the whole
of his life, all that he would become, depended upon
it.

Finally, on the day
before they depart, Jerry determines to swim through the tunnel. His act of
assertion--"he must go into the blackness ahead"--is the beginning of his rite of
passage into manhood and he struggles physically in the darkness of the water.  But,
when Jerry emerges, gasping with a bleeding nose,he glaces at the other boys diving and
playing not far away--"he did not want them."  Instead, he returns home, and when his
mother suggests he swim no more that day, he does not object:  "It was no longer of the
least importance to go to the bay."  For, his having swum through the tunnel indicates
that Jerry has passed from boyhood to manhood, from the "safe beach" to the "wild
bay."

Setting is intrinsic to the theme of Lessing's
story.  Ms. Lessing has used imagery and figures of speech to make the bay fearful and
threatening as the underwater tunnel seems like a place of entombment where Jerry "felt
he was dying."  Jerry's passage through this forebidding tunnel indicates not only his
courage, but his resurrection and rebirth as a man.  The struggle has been a
little bloody, but Jerry feels himself now an adult, not an emasculated boy who needs
protection from his domineering mother. Thus, the influence of the setting of the "wid
bay" is tremendous because the tunnel and the challenge that it presents bring Jerry,
who answers this challenge, to manhood.