The Ordinary and Extraordinary Theme Analysis

Over the course of “The Third and Final Continent,” the narrator comes to see that much of the ordinary world is, in fact, extraordinary. At first, the narrator is notable in part because he is unimpressed with events others find amazing, including the 1969 moon landing, to which he reacts with indifference. Much of his life is centered on the logical and the routine. However, once he meets his landlady Mrs. Croft, his feelings shift. Mrs. Croft at first seems to him like a typical elderly woman, until he learns that she’s 103. The simple fact that she’s lived for more than a century fills the narrator with awe. Each day she lives, he realizes, is “something of a miracle.” His growing ability to see the world with wonder becomes particularly important after Mala, his wife from an arranged marriage, joins him in the United States after her green card is approved. He starts to realize that his life is filled with people and things which are quite ordinary, but that life itself is a spectacular gift. This openness allows for his and Mala’s growing attachment and successful marriage. Years later, he’s become an American citizen, has a pleasant home and garden, a successful son, and a happy marriage. He acknowledges that many people have lived lives like his—seeking their “fortune far from home”—but he cannot help but feel awed by his experience. The story comes full circle as he reflects on the astronauts’ 1969 moon landing, as he recognizes both the incredible achievement and experience of that journey, but recognizing at the same time that his own 30 year journey in America which is just as miraculous.

“The Third and Final Continent” begins in 1969, when the narrator flies to America for his new job in Boston, on the very same day as the moon landing. Although, the landing is later described as “man’s most awesome achievement,” the narrator isn’t particularly impressed. While several men cheer and one woman prays when the landing is announced, he himself doesn’t have an outward reaction. Although the narrator is coming to a new continent himself—staking a claim in a new world—he doesn’t see the parallel to himself and the astronauts. He is, instead, more concerned with navigating his daily life in Boston: finding a place to live, learning what side of the road to drive on, getting used to the food, new currency, and what to call daily items. Later, he reads that the astronauts have traveled “farther than anyone in the history of civilisation” but what strikes him, instead, are the practicalities of their adventure. He notes the astronauts explored the moon for a few hours and “gathered rocks in their pockets.” Consumed by trying to get a handle on living everyday life, the narrator’s focus is entirely on the ordinary—he sees even the extraordinary in ordinary terms.

After the narrator begins living as a boarder in the home of the elderly Mrs. Croft, his perspective subtly changes, helping him to see that the ordinary itself can be extraordinary. Mrs. Croft is amazed by the moon landing, constantly describing it as “splendid.” She expresses “equal measures of disbelief and delight” when she talks about it, and insists that the narrator agree with her. Rather than disappoint her, he begins to call it splendid too. When he reads that the American flag that the astronauts planted on the moon fell over before the astronauts had even flown home, he doesn’t “have the heart” to tell Mrs. Croft. While he can’t quite embrace the idea of the extraordinary yet, he won’t diminish it for her. The key moment of change for the narrator occurs when Mrs. Croft herself becomes something of a miracle to him. Her ordinary existence becomes extraordinary to him when he learns of her age and overcome. He’s amazed by the fact she’s 103, by what she’s seen over that time, and by the fact that she endured the death of her husband and was still able to provide for her family by working as a piano teacher. The narrator’s own mother was driven “insane” when she was widowed by the death of the narrator’s father, so Mrs. Croft’s strength in a similar situation is a revelation to the narrator. When, later in the story, Mrs. Croft is proud of saving herself by calling the police after she injures herself in a fall, the narrator tells her that what she’s done is “splendid.” In echoing the word that Mrs. Croft used to describe the moon landing, he makes clear that, through his relationship with Mrs. Croft, he’s come to see that an ordinary life can in fact be extraordinary.

The narrator’s original focus on the pragmatic is on display in regards to his feelings about his arranged wife Mala’s imminent arrival to join him in America, which he sees as being “something inevitable, but meaningless.” But in this, too, Mrs. Croft shifts his view such that he sees the extraordinary in the ordinary. The narrator’s feelings of resentment are captured in how he thinks about setting up a place to live for him and his wife. He focuses on how it is a duty to move out of Mrs. Croft’s and get an apartment for the two of them. When Mala does arrive, the narrator struggles with how little he knows her—since the marriage was arranged—and with her more traditional Indian customs. He feels he is now more Americanized and has trouble connecting with her. All this changes, however, when he has a realization about what he learned from Mrs. Croft’s approach to life. When the narrator introduces Mala to Mrs. Croft, Mrs. Croft scrutinizes Mala from “head to toe.” The narrator speculates that Mrs. Croft has never seen a woman wearing a sari before and worries about what she will “object to.” Instead, Mrs. Croft, in “equal measure of disbelief and delight,” declares Mala a “perfect lady.” Mrs. Croft’s demeanor—her disbelief and delight—connects Mala with the extraordinary event of the moon landing, and causes the narrator to see his wife as extraordinary as well: he suddenly understands his wife’s bravery and loneliness in coming to this foreign world, to a largely unknown husband, and begins to feel connected to her.

As the story ends, it’s clear that Mrs. Croft has shaped the narrator’s way of seeing the world. He looks at his life with amazement, grateful to have a job, his own home, a happy marriage, and a successful son. Although he thinks “his achievement is quite ordinary” since he is not “the only man to seek his fortune far from home,” he notes also how much of his life is wondrous. Unlike the astronauts who spent “mere hours” on the moon, he’s been in America for thirty years. “As ordinary as it all appears,” he says, it is also “beyond [his] imagination.” Rather than see the extraordinary in the ordinary, as he did back in 1969, he now sees the extraordinary in the ordinary.