NCERT Solutions for Class 12 Humanities English Chapter 1 The Third Level are provided here with simple step-by-step explanations. These solutions for The Third Level are extremely popular among class 12 Humanities students for English The Third Level Solutions come handy for quickly completing your homework and preparing for exams. All questions and answers from the NCERT Book of class 12 Humanities English Chapter 1 are provided here for you for free. You will also love the ad-free experience on Meritnation’s NCERT Solutions. All NCERT Solutions for class 12 Humanities English are prepared by experts and are 100% accurate.

Page No 1:

Question 1:

What does the third level refer to?

Answer:

The Grand Central Station of New York has subways on two levels from where the commuters take trains to different destinations. No third level was ever built. However, the protagonist of the story, Charley, believes in the existence of a third level, operating in a time-frame of 1890s.

The third level signifies an escape from the modern world that is “full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and all the rest of it....” The period of 1890s represents a peaceful life not possible in the present era. From this level, the protagonist wants to travel to Galesburg, Illinois, with his wife Louisa. For him, it is a part of reality while his psychiatrist friend calls it a “waking-dream wish fulfilment.”

Page No 1:

Question 1:

Have you ever had any curious experience which others find hard to believe?

Answer:

Yes, there is one such incident in my life. Last May, I went to Rishikesh to enjoy river-rafting with my family including my father, mother and sister. We got into a raft with a group of five college friends. While the rafting instructor was giving us instructions, I felt that I had experienced this already although it was going to be my first rafting experience. I knew exactly what he would say, how he would say and also what his audiences would ask. I was puzzled, and shared this with my sister but she simply dismissed it. Even her laughing sounded as if I had experienced it under the same circumstances. Then, we seated ourselves properly in the raft, and the adventure began. Initially we took our raft slowly and enjoyed swimming. After that, we came across several rapids. The thrill of rafting experience and my love for the water made me forget all about my premonitions. Suddenly, as we were about to face another rapid, I recollected everything as if I had seen it in a dream. I started shouting that the boy sitting at the front will hit his head. My mom scolded me while people on the raft simply laughed it off. But I was not to be consoled. I asked our trainer to avoid the next rapid and kept on insisting the same. Time was flying very fast, I repeated that the boy will get injured seriously but nobody paid attention. As we entered the next rapid, our raft hit a rock very hard and all of us were thrown into the water. With great difficulty, our trainer got us all back on the raft to find just one person bleeding. The scene was exactly as I had recollected. The same boy, whom I had pointed out, hit his head on the rock. After examining him, the trainer said that the injury is not very serious but could have been if I had not warned him.  For the rest of the journey, everybody was silent. No one spoke anything about the correlation between what I said and what happened. After a few days, I found out that what I had experienced is known as a déjà vu.

 

(The above answer is only a sample provided for students' reference. It is strongly recommended that students prepare the answer on their own.)



Page No 5:

Question 1:

Would Charley ever go back to the ticket-counter on the third level to buy tickets to Galesburg for himself and his wife?

Answer:

After reading the story we get to know that Charley was interested in travelling to Galesburg with his wife Louisa. However, he couldn’t locate the third level again.

The first time round, he found the third level by accident. When he reached the ticket-counter, he realised that the currency he had with him was not useful as it belonged to a different period. He went back to convert his three hundred dollars into the “old-style currency” that could enable him to buy two tickets to Galesburg. However, when he returned to the Grand Central, he could not find the corridor leading to the third level. He couldn’t go back looking for the third level as his wife was too worried about him. Moreover, he himself had stopped looking for it after sometime.



Page No 7:

Question 1:

Do you think that the third level was a medium of escape for Charley? Why?

Answer:

Yes, the third level was a medium of escape for Charley from the unhappy modern world that is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and the like. This is because he could never find it again at the Grand Central Station.

Charley did not agree with his psychiatrist friend when the latter called his experience of visiting the third level ‘a waking-dream wish fulfillment.’ His friend tried in vain to make him realise that his hallucinations are a result of his strong desire to escape to the peaceful times of the 1890s.

Page No 7:

Question 2:

What do you infer from Sam’s letter to Charley?

Answer:

The letter was addressed to Charley but mailed to his grandfather in Galesburg, Illinois. It was mailed in 1894 and now appears in his grandfather’s collection. The letter was suddenly found among the first-day covers where it had never been seen earlier. Moreover, the contents of the letter are exactly what Charley thought about Galesburg of 1890s.

Sam's letter to Charley is a mystery that blends together the worlds of reality and fantasy, and thus, needs further exploring. There are two perspectives from which one can look at the letter. At one level, it proves that Sam has reached Galesburg of 1984. However, if we look at a deeper level, we can infer that the letter is just another instance of his hallucination or dreams of escapism. It is possible that while Charley was looking at the old first-cover letter, he was carried away to a different world where the letter was sent to Charley by Sam. The letter reflects Sam’s undeterred urge that forces him to keep looking for the third level.

Page No 7:

Question 3:

‘The modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and stress.’ What are the ways in which we attempt to overcome them?

Answer:

We can overcome the anxieties and insecurities bred by our inevitable existence in the modern world by getting involved in some practical and beneficial activities. Cultivating hobbies, spending time with family and friends, going on trips and excursions, pursuing meditation and exercises help us live a balanced and healthy life. Reading good books is equivalent to having good friends with great insight. They not only enrich us with the vast store of knowledge but also help us to learn from other’s experience and stay rooted to some basic qualities of humanity. Joining hobby classes or gym, attending social events like birthdays and weddings, going for outdoor games, interacting meaningfully through social-networking sites and writing diaries etc can also help us relieve our worries and stay focussed and disciplined in life. Simple activities like listening to music, playing with pets, an occasional dinner out, watching cinema or plays or going to places like parks etc can go a long way in helping us get rid of stress, boredom and insecurities.

(The above answer is only a sample provided for students' reference. It is strongly recommended that students prepare the answer on their own.)

Page No 7:

Question 4:

Do you see an intersection of time and space in the story?

Answer:

Yes, there are certain instances in the story that show an intersection of time and space. Firstly, the first two levels of Grand Central Station were located in the present time while the third level existed in the 1890s. Secondly, Charley and his wife, Louisa, live in the present time yet he rushes to get old currency to buy two tickets to go to the Galesburg of 1894. Further, the old architecture of the platform at the third level is different from the modern platforms of the first two levels. Besides, the archaic manner of dressing by the people, and the newspaper, The World, dated June 11, 1984 also overlaps with Charley’s real time world and existence. Lastly, the letter that was mailed to Charley’s grandfather on 18th July, 1894 highlights the intersection of time and space as the sender (Charley’s friend Sam) and receiver (Charley himself) belong to the present time.

Page No 7:

Question 5:

Apparent illogicality sometimes turns out to be a futuristic projection? Discuss.

Answer:

Apparent illogicality sometimes turns out to be a futuristic projection. Before the Wright Brothers invented the first aeroplane, nobody could have dared to believe that man could fly. Before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, it would have been impossible to believe in long-distance talks happening in the real-time interface. Moreover, there are examples of inventions, like that of inventing a modern-day sewing machine with a needle that has hole on its wrong end, which were conceived in dreams  but now are part of our everyday reality. 

All this emphasises that fantasies of one point of time that seem illogical may turn out to be revolutionary things that change the future of the mankind. Similarly, it would not be far-fetched to think about railway stations fitted with time-machine devices that would make travel from one era to another just a matter of time.

(The above answer is only a sample provided for students' reference. It is strongly recommended that students prepare the answer on their own.)

Page No 7:

Question 6:

Philately helps keep the past alive. Discuss other ways in which this is done. What do you think of the human tendency to constantly move between the past, the present and the future?

Answer:

Besides philately, there are numerous other ways to help keep the past alive. Collecting historical artefacts, paintings and inscriptions in a museum, collecting and reading books (including autobiographies, bio-sketches, letters and diary entries) written in different eras, collecting and viewing documentaries and other videos are all a few ways of revisiting history. Besides, we can keep our culture and traditions alive when we follow the rituals in ceremonies, treasure memories in the form of videos, photographs and audio collections. Also, reviving old monuments, buildings and other artefacts may prove a huge learning opportunity to those visiting such places, and promote tourism at the same time.

The capacity to oscillate between the past, present and future is a great intellectual gift. This human tendency enables him to plan for the future in the present by reaping benefits from the past. Consider a very simple example of adopting a study technique for board exams. Considering the past result (of class test or half yearly exams) a student makes a strategy plan to address the weak areas more and score better in the future. Thus, such a tendency helps in ensuring acceptance of the impact of important decisions taken at any point of time and learning from them.

(The above answer is only a sample provided for students' reference. It is strongly recommended that students prepare the answer on their own.)

Page No 7:

Question 7:

You have read ‘Adventure’ by Jayant Narlikar in Hornbill Class XI. Compare the interweaving of fantasy and reality in the two stories.

Answer:

Both the stories have got elements of magic realism in them. They draw a unique parallelism between reality and fantasy. In The Adventure, we see that there is a professor named Gaitonde who goes into coma after he meets with an accident. While comatose, he reaches another world in the Indian history where the Marathas become victorious as Viswas Rao escapes narrowly from the bullet. The victory of Marathas brings about diverse changes and reforms in the country. This leads to an intermixing of fantasy with the reality as the actual course of events in the real world were very different. Similar is the case with the story The Third Level where Charley believes in the existence of a third level though only two had ever been built. He is so sure of the existence of the third level at the Grand Central Station that he gets his money exchanged to the old currency. His urge to travel to the world of 1890s becomes a strong obsession resulting in his parting from the real world for a few moments in the form of hallucinations.



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