The Third Level by Jack Finney Literary Analysis Essay Sample

“The Third Level” is a short story by Jack Finney published in 1952. Finney used the science fiction idea of time travel to comment on negative aspects of his contemporary world. 

Time travel is a fascinating idea but in the current state of human knowledge it seems to be impossible. Science fiction writers invent various ways of coping with this problem. As a result, a common concept these writers use is the “wormhole” - a kind of gateway that allows a person to travel almost instantaneously to another place like a parallel universe or another time. In this story, the main character, Charley, stumbled upon a door and a corridor that led him to a third level at New York’s Grand Central Station - a level that should not exist - and he found himself back in the year 1894.

In the first paragraph of the story, Finney foreshadowed his main theme which was that “the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry, and all the rest of it” and people want to escape, but they cannot. Charley’s psychiatrist friend says it is a common problem, and the reader learns later in the story that Charley longs for a peaceful world, a small town where the summer weather is beautiful, people play the piano and sing, and are relaxed and happy. 

Finney told the story from the point-of-view of Charley, a thirty-one-year-old married man who worked in an office. He was an ordinary, typical middle class American of his time. He commuted to work on the train and came home to his wife. He was not really aware of being unhappy with his life. He used first person narration and a comfortable, relaxed, informal, colloquial style, addressing the reader as “you” to bring them into the story and make it seem convincing. For example, when he spoke about his friends’ reaction to him speaking about the Third level and mocked his stamp collecting, he said, “President Roosevelt collected stamps, too, you know.” The first paragraph set a humorous tone when Charley said, “The presidents of the New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads will swear on a stack of timetables that there are only two [levels]”. When Charley described the third level of the station, he gave many details about the physical setting, the old style information booth and the spittoon, and the clothes worn by the men and women: the man’s handle bar mustache and the gold pocket watch. These details all help to persuade the reader that Charley actually did go to the third level - it was not just a dream. 

Other characters were only mentioned peripherally in the story: Charley’s wife, and his friends. The psychiatrist was mentioned at the beginning, but only as a professional who suggested that Charley’s experience was “a waking-dream wish fulfillment”, so it came as a big surprise at the end of the story when we learned that Sam, the psychiatrist, had actually found the third level and gone to live in Galesburg, Illinois in 1894. 

To sum up, Jack Finney wrote a short story using a common science fiction concept, time travel, in order to criticise aspects of the life he and his fellow citizens were living in 1950s New York City. What makes this story appealing to modern readers is that many people today look back on a golden age when life was so much better than today, and they can identify with Charley.