The Tunnel (short story)

The tunnel is a short story by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the first time in 1952 in the anthology The City. Prose I - IV is published by Arche Verlag. It is one of his best known works and the "classics " among the surreal short stories.

Action

Protagonist is a dreamy twenty-four year old student who is described at the beginning of the story as follows:

But on this track, which he often comes over, he notices that the train hurtles unusually long by a really very short tunnel he has otherwise never noticed much. The restlessness of students grows, while the passengers are not disturbed. The conductor assured to request that all was in order. The 24 -year-old pokes through to the platoon leader that the tunnel can not explain. Together, they manage to climb to the locomotive. The cab is empty: the engineer jumped off after five minutes, however, the platoon leader remained on board, out of duty and because he had been " always lived without hope." The locomotive obeys no longer the emergency brake does not work, and the train is racing faster and faster into the dark abyss. The first still wore cotton balls and sunglasses - - At the end of the student sees the coming death bravely in the eye, looks away not from "what should we do " - " Nothing (...) God let us fall, and so we rush because on. him to " In a second, published in 1978 and is now more common version, the last sentence is missing; the story ends with: " Nothing. "

Interpretation and background

The Raging into the abyss train can be interpreted as a metaphor for running in orderly lines people's lives, the ( death, nothingness or the unknown ) converges to a clearly looming disaster. The sudden and inexplicable penetrating into the everyday horror in the form of a Zugsunglücks pointing to that inevitability, in which people hide behind the mundane. The original version contained in the last sentence of the story itself suggests the terrible events as God's will.

With the beginning of the story Dürrenmatt seems to parody the complicated writing style of Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. Content, too, there is an overlap: The Magic Mountain begins with the train journey of a young man who likes to smoke cigars.

In the first sentence of the story mentioned train " siebzehnuhrfünfzig departure, arrival neunzehnuhrsiebenundzwanzig " it might concern the fast train from Bern to Zurich which traveled in the Year of the narrative at these times.

In the short story mentioned in the tunnel, it might be around the Burgdorfer tunnel. He is the only one relatively long tunnel on the old railway line Bern- Olten- Zurich. In the locomotive, it could be a SBB Re 4 /4 I.

Book editions (selection)

  • The tunnel. In: The city. Prose I-IV. Ark, Zurich, 1952 ( first published, with 8 more stories )
  • The tunnel. Narrative. Ark, Zurich 1952 ( Single Sheet )
  • The earth is too beautiful ... Physicists - The Tunnel - The Company of the Vega. Ark, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-7160-2000-1
  • The dog. The tunnel. The Breakdown. Narratives. Diogenes, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-257-23061-3 (Factory Edition, Volume 21)
Surrealism The Physicists A Dangerous Game The Judge and His Hangman Suspicion (novel) Once a Greek The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel The Assignment (novella) The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi (play) Play Strindberg End of the Game
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