The Third Level — Class 12 MCQs with Answers

Key concepts: The Third Level (Class 12 English)

Jack Finney's story of Charley, an ordinary New Yorker who stumbles into a third level at Grand Central Station and finds himself in 1894. Turned away for offering modern money, he can never find the corridor again — until a first-day cover in his own stamp collection proves his psychiatrist got there first.

The claim

The railroad presidents 'will swear on a stack of timetables that there are only two' levels. Charley insists there are three.

Charley

'Just an ordinary guy named Charley, thirty-one years old', in a tan gabardine suit and a straw hat with a fancy band. His wife is Louisa.

The psychiatrist's diagnosis

'A waking-dream wish fulfillment.' The modern world is 'full of insecurity, fear, war, worry', so Charley wants to escape — and his stamp collecting is 'a temporary refuge from reality'.

Charley's rebuttal

His grandfather started the collection and needed no refuge, since things were peaceful in his day. He also notes that President Roosevelt collected stamps.

Grand Central as a tree

'Grand Central is growing like a tree, pushing out new corridors and staircases like roots' — and it has always been 'an exit, a way of escape' for people.

Finding the level

Entering from Vanderbilt Avenue, past the first level (trains like the Twentieth Century) and the second (suburban trains), he takes a corridor 'angling left and slanting downward' and comes out on the third.

Proof it is 1894

Open-flame gaslights; brass spittoons; a wooden information booth; a man in a derby hat with a handlebar mustache pulling a gold watch; a woman in leg-of-mutton sleeves; a small Currier & Ives locomotive with a funnel-shaped stack.

The newspaper

The newsboy's papers are 'The World', which 'hasn't been published for years'. The lead story is about President Cleveland, and Charley later finds that front page in the Public Library files, printed June 11, 1894.

Galesburg, Illinois

Big old frame houses, huge lawns, trees whose branches 'meet overhead and roof the streets'; men smoking cigars, women waving palm-leaf fans, fireflies — and the First World War still twenty years off.

The money problem

The clerk stares at the modern bills: 'That ain't money, mister, and if you're trying to skin me, you won't get very far.' Charley later buys old-style currency, getting less than $200 for $300.

The first-day cover

Collectors mail themselves an envelope on a new stamp's first day of sale; the postmark proves the date and the envelope holds blank paper. Charley finds one addressed to his grandfather at Galesburg, postmarked July 18, 1894, with a six-cent dull brown Garfield stamp.

The final twist

The note inside is from Sam, who has been in Galesburg two weeks and urges them to keep looking. Sam bought eight hundred dollars of old currency for a hay, feed and grain business — and Sam was Charley's psychiatrist.