Is Charley an Escapist?

Illustration by Copilot Designer

Charley wants to go back in time and live in the Galesburg of 1894. He belongs to mid-20^th century in Jack Finney’s short story, The Third Level. What triggered his longing for Galesburg of 1894 is his accidental arrival at the third level of New York Grand Central Railway station. Grand Central has only two levels. But Charley lands on a different platform which belongs to the older period. The people’s dress, the ticket counters, the gaslights, the newspaper stand, and the Currier & Ives locomotive all convince Charley that he is standing in the year of 1894.

Charley’s grandfather lived in Galesburg. So Charley knows that it is 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 lawn, the men smoking cigars and talking quietly, the women waving palm-leaf fans, with the fireflies all around, in a peaceful world” [emphasis added]. Charley would love to live that world “with the First World War still twenty years off, and World War II over torty years in the future.”

Charley wants to book two tickets at the counter, one for his wife Louisa. But since the currency he possesses doesn’t work there, he has to return. Later, however, he can’t find the third level in spite of repeated searches. All people who know him, including his psychiatrist-friend Sam Weiner and his wife Louisa, think he is an escapist chasing a delusion.

Is Charley an escapist? This is a question that I have faced year after year from students when I teach this story in grade 12.

Charley is more a romantic than an escapist. That’s my answer. But all the guide books and online material describe him as an escapist, my students tell me. I tell them to analyse Charley’s character with the details given in the story.

First of all, an escapist is a person who wants to run away from his present reality because it is unacceptable for whatever reason. Is Charley running away from anything? He has no complaints about his workplace. In fact, he doesn’t abandon his work in order to look for the third level; he goes during lunch break. He loves his wife very much. If he has no issues with both, his work and his home, then what is he escaping from?

“The stress of modern life,” his psychiatrist-friend Sam suggests. “The insecurities, fear, war, worry and the rest of it.” Charley is amused, “Well, who doesn’t want to escape all those?”

Now, wanting to live without insecurity, fear, war, worry… is that escapism? I ask my students. If you are running away from the reality, you may be an escapist. But if you merely find an alternative and wish to go there and live in that other world, how can you be labelled an escapist?

Have you heard of the Romantic poets? I ask my students. They hated cities and their noise and stress. They wanted to live in some peaceful “bower” enjoying a relaxed life that is lived out in intimate connection with nature and its vital forces. “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her,” Wordsworth would counsel us. Nature was his teacher, healer, God. As beauty was to Keats. As the human spirit was to Shelley. They were all Romantic poets. They were all fascinated with the past and the exotic. With the simple rustic life.

Were they escapists?

Well, that’s a matter of interpretation.

I interpret Charley as a Romantic who wants to connect better with people and nature. That is far from escapism for me. That is a search for deeper meaning. 

Illustration by Copilot Designer 

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