The most important symbol in “The Third and Final Continent” is the 1969 moon landing. The moon landing is announced as having occurred by the captain on the narrator’s flight to Boston and is covered by The Boston Globe. The narrator reads about how it’s viewed as “man’s most awesome achievement,” important because the astronauts traveled “farther than anyone in the history of civilisation.” Like the astronauts, the narrator is exploring an unknown world. Boston—and America by extension—is as foreign to him as the “magnificent desolation” of the moon is to the astronauts. In this way, the moon landing comes to symbolize any sort of journey into the foreign and unknown, and the way that the unknown has a way of making those who venture into it feel alienated and alone. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that this sort of voyage into the unknown applies not just to the narrator and his wife’s own journey to America, but also to Mrs. Croft’s journey through 103 years of time, from her birth in the 19th century up to this moment of technological achievement marked by the moon landing.
While the moon landing can be seen as “splendid,” as Mrs. Croft describes it, the narrator also experiences it as making little difference in most people’s daily lives. The narrator acknowledges that the astronauts are considered “heroes forever,” but seems to indicate that ordinary American immigrants are important, too. While astronauts spent a “few hours” on the moon “gathering rocks,” people new to America spend years assimilating into the culture, learning to navigate their new world. The narrator has done so particularly successfully and at the end of the story notes that unlike the transitory nature of landing on the moon, he has “remained in this new world for nearly thirty years.” This juxtaposition uses the symbol of the moon landing to assert that “ordinary” immigrant journey’s like the narrator’s are in fact just as extraordinary as epic voyages like the moon landing.
The Moon Landing Quotes in The Third and Final Continent
For a few hours they explored the moon’s surface. They gathered rocks in their pockets, described their surroundings (a magnificent desolation, according to one astronaut), spoke by phone to the president, and planted a flag in lunar soil. The voyage was hailed as man’s most awesome achievement. I had seen full-page photographs in the Globe, of the astronauts in their inflated costumes, and read about what certain people in Boston had been doing at the exact moment the astronauts landed, on a Sunday afternoon.
‘A flag on the moon! Isn’t that splendid?’
I nodded, dreading what 1 knew was coming. ‘Yes, madame.’
“Say ‘splendid’!”
This time I paused, looking to either side in case anyone were there to overhear me, though I knew perfectly well that the house was empty. I felt like an idiot. But it was a small enough thing to ask. ‘Splendid!’ I cried out.
At night we kissed, shy at first but quickly bold, and discovered pleasure and solace in each other’s arms. I told her about my voyage on the SS Roma, and about Finsbury Park and the YMCA, and my evenings on the bench with Mrs. Croft. When I told her stories about my mother, she wept. It was Mala who consoled me when, reading the Globe one evening, I came across Mrs. Croft’s obituary.
While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary . . . Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
The Moon Landing Symbol Timeline in The Third and Final Continent
