What are some examples of word choice that convey the setting of "Through the Tunnel" by Doris Lessing?

Doris Lessing is very adept at conveying a setting through the use of few, carefully chosen words. In this story, we can see this skill at work. She describes the bay, for example, as "wild and rocky," two descriptors which immediately help us to understand that this is not a place where it is safe for children to bathe, but a cove where the tides crash in fiercely and where a person could easily be injured by the unpredictable sea. Likewise, the beach adjacent is "crowded"—putting these two elements together, we can interpret that the reason the beach is so crowded is because the bay area is not available for bathers; it is not a place where people would gather. The word "wild" is not used only once, either—in fact, Lessing uses it twice within the first couple of paragraphs in her story, emphasizing the fact that this is what she wants the reader to remember about the bay.

Word choices that convey the story's setting -- in fact the two different settings -- include the "wild bay" and the "safe beach."  We know, right away, that we are in a beachy, vacation setting based on words like "shore" and "holiday"; further, Jerry focuses on the swinging of his mother's "white, naked arm" and how she carries her "bright-striped bag" and, later, how she sits under her beach umbrella that "looked like a slice or orange peel."  Moreover, the narrator's descriptions of the wild bay and its unpredictability help to convey the sense of danger in this setting.  It has "rough, sharp rock" with water that "showed stains of purple and darker blue."  Even more notable are the description of rocks that lay on the ocean bottom as "discolored monsters" and the mentions of "irregular cold currents" that "shocked [Jerry's] limbs."  The water is a "solid, heavy blue," letting us know that the setting is, indeed, a large body of water.