These days,when students take up Science for plus two after class ten,their main agenda is to qualify one of them competitive exams.They spend hours inexorably juggling 'important' subjects such as Math,Physics,Chemistry and the heartless parents haul their kids up to get through the premium institutes for engineering or medical science.Unfortunately,amid all the juggling and hauling up kids ignore English.I am not saying this observation is general but it is most certainly generic to most schools I have come across.At least such was the case back in my school.And there is this disheartening notion about students shifting to Humanities in college after having studied Science in school that they failed miserably at the latter so they had no option but to take up English because apparently it was 'easy' to score back in school.Consequently the teachers teaching English in a class full of kids exchanging notes on Calculus,Organic Chemistry etc even in the English periods are totally disheartened at such a sight and end up teaching most chapters half-heartedly.
One of these chapters which seemed almost unintelligible to most of my classmates back in school is The Third Level by Jack Finney.I was teaching my student and he complained that he could not understand most parts of it in class.It piqued me.Of course I couldn't tell him it isn't the teacher's fault but the fault lies with the students.At this point I am beginning to feel most of you would think I am being snooty,but trust me I am only,sincerely making a plea to all the CBSE students studying English (Core) to take interest in the text.It's a very interesting text and so are most of the chapters.And I am only making an effort to raise your interest as a student who loves the subject.So here goes.
When we study a story/novel/poem,it's important that we also briefly study the author's background.Jack Finney,an American, wrote at a time when America was taking the helm at the Second World War(1939-1945).He was deeply aggrieved by the helplessness left in its wake and was a witness to the indictment of the war.Plenty of young boys were sent away indiscreetly and most of them never returned.This disturbed most authors writing during the aforesaid period and they explored many a crises which came as unfortunate consequences of the war through their writing.For them,like most of us,writing was an outlet for their pent up angst and distress.Some of them created a Utopian world which would be their means to escape into a world devoid of hardships and crises while others wrote fantasy,they wrote about time-travel etc all with the common motive of experiencing the 'other'.
So when the protagonist of the story,Charley,extremely dissatisfied with his ordinary life,wavers into the non-existent 'Third Level' at the Grand central Station and wishes to travel to Galesberg with his wife,he is certainly hallucinating.However,having failed to enter the third level a second time he turns to his Psychiatrist friend,to help him get better insight into the current state of mysterious happenings.Both the psychiatrist and Charley's wife Louisa refuse to believe him shrugging the incident off as a figment of imagination ( which indeed it is ).What's important to note here is the disconnect between the sequestered mind of our protagonist and people who are close to him.This disconnect is symbolic of the gradual, incipient chasm carved out between two people with the onset of the modern era.This inability to understand one another is ironically highlighted when the Psychiatrist sends Charley a letter,after having wavered into third level himself (He too is hallucinating of course) which the latter discovers in the midst of blank first day covers ( Note how Charley doesn't receive any letters from anybody and the only letters he has are first day covers with blank pages collected over the years).It is ironical because a psychiatrist is supposed to cure our mental illness,whereas,in this case,he is afflicted by the same disease he is trying to cure highlighting the extent of the mental disease.The story ends with the couple convinced that the third level exists after all because the psychiatrist has confirmed it and the latter cannot be questioned.
The story is a brilliant metaphor for the modern day existential crises plaguing the human mind so much so that it builds an illusory world of happiness and how it refuses to jolt back to reality.
Trivia-Jack Finney is the author of the brilliant novel The Body Snatchers which was adapted into the movie starring Nicole Kidman ,The Invasions.
One of these chapters which seemed almost unintelligible to most of my classmates back in school is The Third Level by Jack Finney.I was teaching my student and he complained that he could not understand most parts of it in class.It piqued me.Of course I couldn't tell him it isn't the teacher's fault but the fault lies with the students.At this point I am beginning to feel most of you would think I am being snooty,but trust me I am only,sincerely making a plea to all the CBSE students studying English (Core) to take interest in the text.It's a very interesting text and so are most of the chapters.And I am only making an effort to raise your interest as a student who loves the subject.So here goes.
When we study a story/novel/poem,it's important that we also briefly study the author's background.Jack Finney,an American, wrote at a time when America was taking the helm at the Second World War(1939-1945).He was deeply aggrieved by the helplessness left in its wake and was a witness to the indictment of the war.Plenty of young boys were sent away indiscreetly and most of them never returned.This disturbed most authors writing during the aforesaid period and they explored many a crises which came as unfortunate consequences of the war through their writing.For them,like most of us,writing was an outlet for their pent up angst and distress.Some of them created a Utopian world which would be their means to escape into a world devoid of hardships and crises while others wrote fantasy,they wrote about time-travel etc all with the common motive of experiencing the 'other'.
So when the protagonist of the story,Charley,extremely dissatisfied with his ordinary life,wavers into the non-existent 'Third Level' at the Grand central Station and wishes to travel to Galesberg with his wife,he is certainly hallucinating.However,having failed to enter the third level a second time he turns to his Psychiatrist friend,to help him get better insight into the current state of mysterious happenings.Both the psychiatrist and Charley's wife Louisa refuse to believe him shrugging the incident off as a figment of imagination ( which indeed it is ).What's important to note here is the disconnect between the sequestered mind of our protagonist and people who are close to him.This disconnect is symbolic of the gradual, incipient chasm carved out between two people with the onset of the modern era.This inability to understand one another is ironically highlighted when the Psychiatrist sends Charley a letter,after having wavered into third level himself (He too is hallucinating of course) which the latter discovers in the midst of blank first day covers ( Note how Charley doesn't receive any letters from anybody and the only letters he has are first day covers with blank pages collected over the years).It is ironical because a psychiatrist is supposed to cure our mental illness,whereas,in this case,he is afflicted by the same disease he is trying to cure highlighting the extent of the mental disease.The story ends with the couple convinced that the third level exists after all because the psychiatrist has confirmed it and the latter cannot be questioned.
The story is a brilliant metaphor for the modern day existential crises plaguing the human mind so much so that it builds an illusory world of happiness and how it refuses to jolt back to reality.
Trivia-Jack Finney is the author of the brilliant novel The Body Snatchers which was adapted into the movie starring Nicole Kidman ,The Invasions.
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