In “The Third Level,” Jack Finney uses time travel to explore the melancholy of modern life and the common desire to return to simpler times. The story’s protagonist, Charley, is exhausted by life in the mid-20th century, and his generation is especially traumatized from living through both World Wars. He expresses envy of those older than him, such as his grandfather, who he believes was a happier person because he grew up in a kinder, more stable era of history. As a result, when Charley discovers a third level of Grand Central Station that takes him back to 1894, he attempts to buy tickets to permanently return to what he views as a more peaceful and simple time. However, his modern currency prevents him from buying tickets, and though he later obtains enough 19th-century currency to make a life for himself in 1894, he is unable to find the third level again and therefore misses his chance to escape modernity. While Charley’s failure initially seems to suggest that a return to the past is impossible, the story reveals that Sam, Charley’s psychiatrist who told Charley that the third level was a figment of his imagination, succeeds in finding the third level and time-travelling to live in the past. This twist ending hints that even the most cynical and modern individual can find solace in the past when faced with an unfavorable present. What’s more, the fact that Charley’s psychiatrist is the one to leave behind modernity suggests that even the most seemingly emotionally balanced people in modern times still feel the pull of nostalgia.
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Modernity and Nostalgia ThemeTracker
Modernity and Nostalgia 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.
There were brass spittoons on the floor, and across the station a glint of light caught my eye; a man was pulling a gold watch from his vest pocket. He snapped open the cover, glanced at his watch, and frowned. He wore a derby hat, a black four-button suit with tiny lapels, and he had a big, black, handle-bar mustache. Then I looked around and saw that everyone in the station was dressed like eighteen-ninety-something; I never saw so many bears, sideburns and fancy mustaches in my life.
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.
