The Third Level — Class 12 English

Written by Jack Finney, this story blends fantasy and reality and explores the human desire to escape the insecurity of the modern world. The narrator, Charley, a thirty-one-year-old ordinary man, claims that the Grand Central Station in New York has not two but three levels, though the railways officially recognise only two. One night, while hurrying to take the subway, he loses his way through the station's maze of corridors and stairs and finds himself on a mysterious third level — a smaller station with old-fashioned gaslights, brass spittoons, a wooden information booth, and people dressed in the style of the 1890s. A newspaper there, 'The World', is dated June 11, 1894. Charley realises he has somehow stepped back into the year 1894 and longs to buy two tickets to Galesburg, Illinois — a peaceful town of his grandfather's time, before the two World Wars. But the clerk refuses his modern currency, and Charley is forced to leave. He later buys old-style currency to return, but can never find the third level again. His psychiatrist friend dismisses the third level as a 'waking-dream wish fulfilment', a temporary refuge from reality, since the modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war and worry. The story's twist comes when Charley discovers an old first-day cover among his stamp collection, containing a letter from his friend Sam, the very psychiatrist, who has apparently found the third level and settled happily in Galesburg in 1894. The story raises questions about time, space, escapism and the line between illusion and reality.