The Third Level Analysis

The Third Level Jack Finney’s The Third Level is the story of Charley’s adventures on the hidden third level of Grand Central Station. No one believes that there is a third level, so Charley talks to Sam, a phsyciatrist friend of his, to try and understand what happened to him. His friend believes that he imagined the third level as a way to deal with the troubles of normal life. Charley talks about how one night as he was trying to take the subway to get home to his wife he got lost and found himself on the third level. The third level looks much like the second, except its smaller and everyone and everything look to be out of the year 1890. Charley discovers that he is now in the year 1894. He decides to buy tickets to Galesburg, Illinois, but when he tries to pay for the tickets they won’t accept his money, as it is from the future and looks

The story starts with the man describing a boy who is playing with a toy helicopter on the beach who comes across a man, buried in the sand except for his head and one arm, dressed in a pressure suit. The man states that his mind doesn’t work right and describes a kid playing on the parallel bars and landing on his head causing brain damage. The man describes the kid learning to measure the periods of satellites using a timepiece. The man also describes swimming in the Grenadines where he was attacked by an ameba and learned to never dive alone and that a lack of oxygen and too much carbon dioxide could cause fear and panic. All the while, the man describes looking out at the sea. He describes a toy rocket crashing and a doll falling out of it and getting buried in the sand except for an arm and its head. The man then states that he is the boy and the man and the doll and that he has crashed on mars and will be dead soon. There is no sea and there is no way home. the story ends with the man radioing back to earth that he made it to