Summary of The Third Level
The Third Level is the first chapter of the CBSE Class 12 English Supplementary textbook – Vistas. It is one of the most puzzling chapters of all the CBSE Class English literature chapters because it has a theme of science fiction that correlates to psychology, and it is open-ended. Students often need clarification about what exactly the reasons and causes are behind the appearance and disappearance of the third level. The Third Level Class 12 Summary is a part of BYJU’S CBSE Summary. The story is about a young man of thirty-one who wanders into a third level at the Grand Central station by accident and finds out that it belongs to a completely different era from the past. It creates interest in the reader’s mind from the very beginning and slowly develops into a complex climax towards the end. The summary of the chapter is given in the next section. Students can refer to it for a better understanding of the chapter. They can refer to CBSE Notes for additional content and study materials on the CBSE English syllabus.
Class 12 English The Third Level Summary
The Third Level is a short story that shows us how trauma can manifest inside us and take a psychological toll. The main character Charley is a thirty-one-year-old man who earns his living by working at an office just like most other people. He is the narrator of the story and starts by telling us about the presence of a third level at the Grand Central Station in New York. But his psychiatrist judges it as waking-dream wish fulfilment. The psychiatrist stated this because the narrator was not happy with his life – he was trying to find refuge from his troubles by imagining the existence of a third level.
One day, Charley was caught up with some work, and he had to stay late in the evening. He wanted to reach home as quickly as possible. Therefore, he decided to take the subway instead of the bus. He walked into a third level at the Grand Central Station – a station which is supposed to have only two levels. He found the third level weird as the infrastructure and people seemed to be from a different era. He finally found out from a newspaper that it was the year 1894. He remembered this era before the First and Second World wars. He went to the ticket counter to book two tickets to Galesburg, Illinois but the clerk at the ticket counter accused him of using fake money and threatened to turn him in to the police. The narrator ran away from the station the same way he came inside.
The next day, Charley withdrew almost all his money – three hundred dollars and bought old-style currency worth the same. He wanted to return to 1894 in Galesburg and settle down with his wife Louisa, but he could never find the third level again. When his wife learned about all this, she got very worried and asked him not to look for the third level again. The narrator returned to his hobby of collecting stamps. At that time, he realised that the third level did exist. His friend Sam, whom he had always told stories about Galesburg during his childhood, had disappeared. The narrator assumed that Sam might have gone to Galesburg in 1984.
One night as Charley was going through his stamps, he noticed a letter among one of his oldest first-day covers. It had the address of his grandfather in Galesburg, Illinois, and it was dated 18th July 1894. But he opened the envelope to find it was actually a letter to him from Sam telling him about how things were in 1894 and how he was enjoying those moments. Sam asked the narrator to keep searching for the third level because it was worth it. The narrator went to the stamp and coin store to find that Sam had bought eight hundred dollars worth of old-style currency. He figured that Sam might have settled down comfortably with this kind of money in 1894 with an investment in the food and grain business because he would not have been able to pursue his actual profession, which was that of a psychiatrist.
Conclusion of The Third Level
The Third Level is an interesting story that uses science fiction as a theme to talk about the kind of trauma people went through in post-war life. The Third Level Class 12 summary will help students understand the concepts involved quickly and precisely. The story’s narrator is unhappy with the present state of the world following the first two world wars. This unhappiness manifests as an inner trauma for which the narrator finds a coping mechanism. He develops a tendency to escape from the present by supplanting it with a nostalgia for a past that was peaceful and unaffected by wars. His imagination helps him find this escape by creating a third level at the Grand Central Station that takes him to a different time in 1894.
Students can find this chapter hard and complex to understand. But with the above summary and various other materials and content available in English subjects for CBSE students, understanding and studying literature will be easy and exciting. Students can go to the main website for BYJU’S for further information regarding English literature and other grammar-related topics.
