Charley

Charley is the narrator and central character of the story, a thirty-one-year-old New Yorker who is, on the surface, an ordinary modern man with a wife, a job and a hobby. What sets him apart is his restlessness and his deep discomfort with the modern world. He is sensitive to the fear, insecurity and stress of his age, and this unease gives him a powerful longing to escape into a calmer past. His discovery of the third level, and his eager wish to buy tickets to the Galesburg of 1894, reveal a dreamy, imaginative temperament that clings to the idea of a safer, gentler time. He is also gentle and loving toward his wife, wanting to take her with him into that dreamed-of world. Whether his experience is real or a product of his own anxious mind, Charley embodies the theme of escapism: he is the everyman who cannot make peace with the present and so reaches backward f …