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The Third Level Extra Short Questions

The Third Level Extra Short Questions – Looking for important question answers from *The Third Level* (Chapter 1 of the Class 12 English Vistas book) for your CBSE exam? We’ve got you covered! Our compilation of NCERT solutions will help you strengthen your subject knowledge and boost your board exam performance. Practicing these questions, including extract-based, multiple choice, short, and long answer types, will improve your answer writing skills and increase your chances of scoring high. Start exploring now to master The Third Level!

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The Third Level Very Short Questions

1. Who is the protagonist of the story?
Answer:Charley

2. What is the ‘Third Level’ in the story?
Answer:A mysterious platform at Grand Central Station that leads to the past.

3. What time period does Charley discover at the Third Level?
Answer:The 1890s.

4. Who is Charley’s psychiatrist friend?
Answer:Sam.

5. What does Charley buy at the Third Level?
Answer:Old-style currency (for use in the 1890s).

6. Why does Charley want to escape to the Third Level?
Answer:To escape the pressures and stress of modern life.

7. What happens when Charley tries to withdraw money for use in the past?
Answer:He realizes modern money is useless in the 1890s.

8. How does Sam prove his own belief in the Third Level?
Answer:By sending Charley a letter from the past.

9. What is the central theme of “The Third Level”?
Answer:Escapism and the desire to find solace in a simpler past.

10. What mode of transportation is central to the story’s setting?
Answer: Trains at Grand Central Station.

The Third Level Extra Short Questions

1. ‘It’s easy to judge others and give advice, but much more difficult to apply it to ourselves.’ Elaborate with reference to the character of Sam in The Third Level. (CBSE Sample paper 2023)

Ans. The statement “It’s easy to judge others and give advice, but much more difficult to apply it to ourselves” applies to Sam in The Third Level. While Sam initially dismisses Charley’s belief in the Third Level as an escape from stress, he ends up seeking the same escape himself. This shows that, despite advising Charley, Sam also struggled with dissatisfaction, making him follow the same path he had once judged.

2. How does the narrator describe himself? What made him take the subway from Grand Central?

Ans. The narrator describes that he is Charley, 31. He is wearing a tan gabardine suit and a straw hat with a fancy band. One night last summer, he worked late at the office. So, he was in a hurry to be at his apartment. He took the subway from Grand Central because it was faster than the bus.

3. How does the narrator describe the first two levels of the Grand Central?

Ans. The narrator went down the steps of the Grand Central from Vanderbilt Avenue to the first level. From there one can take trains like the twentieth century. Then he walked down another flight to the second level. From there the suburban trains leave for various destinations.

4. The narrator got lost once when he ducked into an arched doorway heading for the subway. Where did he come out?

Ans. The narrator says that he has been in and out of Grand Central hundreds of times. He always bumps into new doorways, stairs and corridors. Once he got into a one-mile-long tunnel and came out in the Roosevelt Hotel lobby. Another time he came up in an office building on Forty-sixth street, three blocks away.

5. What does the narrator think of Grand Central? What does it symbolize?

Ans. The narrator thinks that Grand Central is growing like a tree. It pushes out new corridors and staircases like roots. There are long tunnels under the city on their ways to Times Square and to Central Park.

The Grand Central symbolizes the labyrinth that this world is with its intricate and tangled pathways. It has always been an exit, a way to escape.

6. What strange things did the narrator see when he reached the third level of Grand Central?

Ans. Charley noticed a difference in the way things looked at the third level of the Grand Central Station. It was smaller, with fewer ticket counters and had an old look of the 1890s with wooden booths, dim open-flame gaslights, brass spittoons and an old-style locomotive with a funnel shaped stack. Even the people’s attire was old fashioned and men had funny handle-bar mustaches and sideburns. The whole setting was in contrast to the modern times.

The Third Level Extra Short Questions

7. How did the man on the third level appear to the narrator?

Ans. The narrator saw a man pulling a gold watch from his vest pocket. He snapped open the cover, glanced at his watch and frowned. He wore a derby hat, a black four-button suit with tiny lapels and had a big, black handlebar mustache.

8. What did the narrator do to make sure that he was actually at the third level of Grand Central?

Ans. The narrator walked over to a news boy. He glanced at the stack of newspapers. It was ‘The World’ and it had not been published for years. The lead story was about President Cleveland. Later on, he confirmed from the public library files that the newspaper was dated 11th June 1894.

9. Why did the narrator turn towards the ticket windows? Why did he run back from there?

Ans. The narrator turned towards the ticket window to buy tickets to go to Galesburg, Illinois, in the year of 1894. When Charley produced money to pay for the two tickets, the clerk stared at him as the currency did not match with the currency of that time. He accused him of trying to cheat him and threatened to hand him over to the police. The narrator turned away thinking that there was nothing nice about jail even in 1894.

10. How does the narrator describe Galesburg, Illinois?

Ans. The narrator states that Galesburg, Illinois, is a wonderful town with big old frame houses, huge lawns and big trees. Summer evenings were twice as long. People sat out on their lawns, the men smoking cigar and talking quietly, the women waving palm-leaf fans. It means the people had lived in peace and harmony and had a lot of leisure time.

11. What did the narrator do the next day?

Ans. The narrator withdrew his entire money from the bank. He bought old-style currency to buy two tickets to Galesburg. He got less than two hundred old-style bills for his three hundred dollars. He consoled himself for having got less money by the fact that life in 1894 Galesburg was quite cheaper as compared to the modern life.

12. How does the narrator’s psychiatrist friend react to the narrator’s statement that the third level exists?

Ans. The narrator’s psychiatrist friend, Sam Weiner, says it is ‘a waking-dream-wish fulfilment’. He says that the narrator is unhappy and the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war and worry. So, he wants to escape and has created an imaginary third level.

The Third Level Extra Short Questions

13. How did Louisa react when the narrator told his wish to go to the third level to buy tickets?

Ans. When the narrator told Louisa about his wish she got pretty worried. She was a loving and a caring wife. She got alarmed at Charley’s claim of having been to the third level. His exchanging the currency was a cause of concern. She thought the third level to be a product of Charley’s imagination and asked him to stop looking for it. However, after some time they both started looking for the third level.

14. Why was going to the psychiatrist the obvious step? Did it help?

Ans. Charley was convinced that there were three and not just two levels at the Grand Central Station, when all others claimed there were only two. Going to the psychiatrist was the obvious step because he wanted his opinion on whether it was insanity on his part to believe so. The psychiatrist too interpreted his delusion as a waking-dream wish fulfilment and, like his stamp collection, a temporary refuge from a world full of tensions, worries, insecurity, fear, war and envy.

15. Why could Charley not be convinced by his distractions that the third level was only a wish fulfilment?

Ans. Charley could not be convinced that the third level was a temporary escape from reality through fantasy like stamp collection. He argued that his grandfather too was into stamp collection and he started Charley’s collection. He said that at that time people were content and lived in peaceful times and did not need to seek such refuge.

The Third Level Extra Short Questions

16. What happened to the narrator’s psychiatrist friend Sam Weiner? What do you deduce from it?

Ans. One day the narrator’s psychiatrist friend Sam Weiner disappeared. He was a city boy. He always said that he liked Galesburg very much and its sound. From this I deduce that even Sam was affected by the stress of modern living and sought temporary refuge by travelling through time.

17. Why was Charley sure that his psychiatrist friend had gone back to the year 1894 in Galesburg?

Ans. Charley’s psychiatrist friend Sam had disappeared. One night going through his first-day covers, Charley found one dated 1894 and with his Grandfather’s address on it. He opened and found inside a letter from Sam addressed to him. He invited him to the third level saying that it was worth it.

18. What is the first-day cover?

Ans. At that time when a new stamp is issued, stamp collectors buy some of them and use them in order to mail envelopes to themselves and the postmark proves the date. That envelope is called the first day cover.

19. Describe the first-day cover envelope that the narrator found among his collection.

Ans. The first-day cover envelope was dated July 18, 1894. It was addressed to his grandfather in Galesburg. It carried a letter from Sam addressed to Charley. The stamp was a six-cent, dull brown, with a picture of President Garfield.

20 What had Sam Weiner written on the paper in the first-day cover?

Ans. Sam Weiner had invited the narrator to the third level. It was worth it. It added that it was true, there existed the third level and he had found that. He had been there for two weeks. He could hear someone playing a piano, down the street. They were singing ‘Seeing Nelly Home’.

The Third Level Extra Short Questions

21. What did the narrator find about Sam Weiner when he went to the stamp and coin store?

Ans. When the narrator went to the stamp and coin store he came to know that Sam had bought eight hundred dollars worth of old currency. That ought to set him up in a nice little hay, feed and grain business. He always wanted to do that. He didn’t want to go back to his old business. Not in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1894, Charley felt that the services of a psychiatrist would not be needed in Galesburg of 1894, his friend would be jobless there.

22. What is the evidence that Charley often sought escape through time travel?

Ans. Charley had often bumped into new doorways, archways and stairways at the Grand Central and got lost. Once he had got into a long tunnel, about a mile long, and another time had landed in an office building on the Forty-sixth street, three blocks away. This makes it evident that Charley, often sought escape through wishful dreaming and in nostalgic memories. He often lived in a world of fantasy.

23. Discuss the irony at the end of the chapter.

Ans. The irony at the end of the chapter lies in the fact that while Charley longed to reach the Galesburg of 1894, it is his psychiatrist friend, who had mocked his belief in the Third Level, who actually finds it and reaches Galesburg. Sam then advises Charley to keep searching for the Third Level.