Sam Weiner

Sam Weiner is Charley's friend and his psychiatrist. He is intelligent and reasonable, and it is he who supplies the calm, scientific explanation for Charley's experience, calling it a waking-dream wish fulfilment - the mind's way of escaping the unhappiness and insecurity of modern life. In doing so he seems to stand for logic and common sense against Charley's fantasy. Yet Sam is himself unhappy in the modern world, and the story's twist turns him from the sceptic into the dreamer: he disappears, and the letter found among Charley's grandfather's stamps, dated July 1894 and signed by Sam, suggests that he has gone through to the peaceful Galesburg of the past and is contentedly living and doing business there. His final act - urging Charley not to give up th …