The Third Level Extra Questions and Answers

The Third Level Extra Questions and Answers

Q1. How many levels are there in the Grand Central Station? How did Charley reach the third level of the Grand Central Station?

Ans. Grand Central Station, New York, has only two levels. One evening, Charley reached the station to catch an early train to his home. While he was on the second level, he entered an arch doorway down. He went downstairs and reached the third level. In the third level Charley met a world and people​ like 1894.

Q2. What is the role of the stamp – collection in the story?

Ans. The stamps collection plays an important role in the story. It is Charley’s favourite pastime. In fact, he got this collection from his grandfather. Most importantly,  this collection becomes a medium for Charley to connect two different worlds in the same time period. It connects a world of the present day in which Charley lives and the world of his grandfather in Galesburg,Illinois  in 1894 in which Charley wishes to go. On the grounds of his stamp collection hobby, his psychiatrist friend, Sam, declares Charley  a day dreamer.

Q3. How did Charley ascertain that he had reached the 1894 world?

Ans. At first, the people looked different as the men had handlebar mustaches, side whiskers, and beards. He saw a diesel locomotive with a funnel shaped stack at the rail. There were open flame gaslights.

Charley began to suspect that he had reached the third level. To make sure, he went to a newsboy and saw ‘The World’, a popular newspaper which stopped its publication before 1894. Now, it was confirmed that he was on the third level. 

Q4. Why did Charley run away from the third level?

Ans. Charley was greatly surprised when he reached the third level because  everything looked a hundred years old there. He wanted  to buy two rail tickets to Galesburg where he had spent his childhood. But when he took out his money to pay the fare, the clerk at the ticket window neglected his notes as Charley did have old style currency notes. The clerk warned him that he would call the police. Charley did not wish to go to jail in 1894. He ran away.

Q5. What was Sam’s answer to Charley’s dilemma?

Ans. When Charley met his psychiatrist friend Sam, he explained to him about this experience about the third level. The psychiatrist regarded it as a mental illness. Charley’s hobby of stamp collection also proved that he was a daydreamer. The psychiatrist explained that it was just an escape from the struggles, stress,tensions, fear of real life by fantasizing. His friends and his wife also began to consider Charley as a mental patient. Although Charley was happy about his third level experience. But his wife and friends believed that Charley was looking for an exit to escape his reality.

Q.6 Why was Charley not able to get to Galesburg?

Ans. Charley got failed to buy two tickets at third level during his first visit. So,he went to a particular shop that sold old currency. He bought old style currency and went to railway station. He reached the first level, went down to the second and looked for the doorway that led to the third level. He tried a lot but could not find it again.

Q7. How did Sam reach Galesburg? How did he settle down there?

Ans. Sam was a city boy who was sick of his city life. He loved to listen about Glaseburg from the author. From Charley’s experience, he learnt that one can get into the third level only once. So ,Sam first got changed old currency from the shop and then went to the railway station. He succeeded to find the door to the third level as claimed by Charley, purchased ticket and reached the 1894 Galesburg, Charley’s village. Having reached there, Sam settled himself in hay business.

 Q8. How did Sam’s mail reach Charley?

Ans. When Sam reached the third level and landed in Galesburg, he became part of a hundred year old world, the year 1894 a world devoid of the modern media of communication. He had to depend only on postal system but there was no link between his old world and Charley’s present world. In order to send a mail to Charley, Sam sent it to Charley’s grandfather who still existed in the third level and the grandfather kept the mail in his stamp collection and consequently Charley received the mail.

Q9. What was Charley’s strange experience at the Grand Central Station?

Ans. One night, Charley was in a hurry to  reach home early. He decided to catch a subway train from the Grand Central Station. He  took a path, which led him to the third level of Grand Central Station. On arriving here, he faced something, which appeared outright strange to him.

The information booth was made of wood. There were open flame gaslight. There were old fashioned railway engines, men and women in old fashioned clothes, carrying old fashioned accessories, such as the gold pocket watch. There were brass spittoons on the floors. By now Charley began to suspect that he had come to the past.

His doubt got cleared when he read the cover page of the newspaper ‘The World’ . It was dated June 11,1894. When Charlie went to buy two tickets to Galesberg, Illinois, the clerk refused to sell him tickets because he did not accept the new currency, which Charley offered him.

Q10. Do you think Charley was really a worried man as his psychiatrist friend and others believed?

Ans. No, Charley was a happy man. Even though the modern man is generally unhappy and worried, Charley appears to be quite a normal man. The day when he found out the third level, Charley was in a hurry to reach home, to meet his wife. A man who longs to get home and be happy with his wife is a happy man. Moreover, Charley had a good collection of stamps which he enjoyed in his free time. 

         Yes, Charley seems to be a worried man, an escapist and a maniac dreamer also. Charley belonged to the post World War time, 1984 and anxiety and insecurity were a part of everyone’s psyche. Everyone wanted to escape to a peaceful place but there was probably none. Charley, being a similar escapist, found peace by escaping into his world of stamps and unknown places in his imagination.