“The Third Level” explores the idea of physical and mental escapism in the face of societal ennui and emotional dissatisfaction. When the protagonist, Charley, discovers a way to time travel to the past via a hidden third level of Grand Central Station, his psychiatrist, Sam, tells him that what he’s experiencing is a waking dream caused by his desire to escape modern life. While Charley does not agree that the third level is a figment of his imagination, he does agree with Sam that he, along with most other modern people, have a desire to escape everyday life due to the unhappy times they live in. However, in contrast to Sam’s ideas of escapism via daydreams, Charley’s means of escape is a literal exit from the 20th century into 1894, where the low-grade despair of modernity will no longer haunt him. Ironically, this exit is ultimately enjoyed not by Charley but by Sam, who discovers the third level for himself and is able to set up an entirely new life in the past, which he finds significantly more fulfilling than his modern life. Thus, throughout the story, Finney portrays escapism as a means to rid oneself of emotional pain and the dissatisfaction of modern life.
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Escapism Quotes in The Third Level
I told him about the third level at Grand Central Station, and he said it was a waking-dream wish fulfillment. He said I was unhappy. That made my wife kind of mad, but he explained that he meant the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and all the rest of it, and that I just want to escape. Well, hell, who doesn’t? Everyone I know wants to escape, but they don’t wander down into any third level at Grand Central Station.
My stamp collecting, for example; that’s a “temporary refuge from reality.” Well, maybe, but my grandfather didn’t need any refuge from reality; things were pretty nice and peaceful in his day, from all I hear, and he started my collection.
Sometimes I think Grand Central is growing like a tree, pushing out new corridors and staircases like roots. There’s probably a long tunnel that nobody knows about feeling its way under the city right now, on its way to Time Square, and maybe another to Central Park. And maybe—because for so many people through the years Grand Central has been an exit, a way of escape—maybe that’s how the tunnel I got into…
Have you ever been there? It’s a wonderful town still, with big old frame houses, huge lawns and tremendous trees whose branches meet overhead and roof the streets. And in 1894, summer evenings were twice as long, and people sat out on their lawns, the men smoking cigars and talking quietly, the women waving palm-leaf fans, with the fireflies all around, in a peaceful world. To be back there with the First World War still twenty years off, and World War II over forty years in the future … I wanted two tickets for that.
He nodded at the bills. “That ain’t money, mister,” he said, “and if you’re trying to skin me you won’t get very far,” and he glanced at the cash drawer beside him. Of course the money in his drawer was old-style bills, half again as big the money we use nowadays, and different-looking. I turned away and got out fast. There’s nothing nice about jail, even in 1894.
My friend Sam Weiner disappeared! Nobody knew where, but I sort of suspected because Sam’s a city boy, and I used to tell him about Galesburg—I went to school there—and he always said he liked the sound of the place.
Charley, it’s true; I found the third level! I’ve been here two weeks, and right now, down the street at the Daly’s, someone is playing a piano, and they’re all out on the front porch singing, “Seeing Nellie home.” And I’m invited over for lemonade. Come on back, Charley and Louisa. Keep looking till you find the third level! It’s worth it, believe me!
I found out that Sam bought eight hundred dollars’ worth of old-style currency. That ought to set him up in a nice little hay, feed, and grain business; he always said that’s what he really wished he could do, and he certainly can’t go back to his old business. Not in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1894. His old business? Why, Sam was my psychiatrist.
Now, I don’t know why this should have happened to me. I’m just an ordinary guy named Charley, thirty-one years old, and I was wearing a tan gabardine suit and a straw hat with a fancy band; I passed a dozen men who looked just like me. And I wasn’t trying to escape from anything; I just wanted to get home to Louisa, my wife.
