NCERT Solutions for Class 10 English First Flight Chapter 1 A Letter to God are available here. NCERT questions and answers of Class 10 English A Letter to God are prepared by expert teachers. All these solutions are updated as per the latest CBSE syllabus and contain questions related to the story, which will help you to score good marks in the exams.
Class 10 English A Letter to God NCERT Question and Answers
Oral Comprehension Check (Page No. 5)
Question 1. What did Lencho hope for?
Answer: Lencho hoped for a good rain as it was much needed for a good harvest.
Question 2. Why did Lencho say the raindrops were like ‘new coins’?
Answer: Lencho’s crops were ready for harvest. As raindrops would have helped in getting a better harvest, resulting in more prosperity, so Lencho compared them with ‘new coins’
Question 3. How did the rain change? What happened to Lencho’s fields?
Answer: The rain changed into hailstones as a strong wind began to blow and huge hailstones began to fall along with the rain. All the crops in Lencho’s field got destroyed because of the weather conditions.
Question 4. What were Lencho’s feelings when the hail stopped?
Answer: After the hail stopped, Lencho’s soul was filled with sadness. He could see a bleak future for himself and his family. He was worried about the lack of food in the coming year.
Oral Comprehension Check (Page No. 6)
Question 1. Who or what did Lencho have faith in? What did he do?
Answer: Lencho had complete faith in God. He believed that God’s eyes see everything, even what is deep in one’s conscience. So, he wrote a letter to God saying that he needed a hundred pesos to sow his field again
Question 2. Who read the letter?
Answer: Postmaster read the letter.
Question 3. What did the postmaster do then?
Answer: The postmaster laughed when he read Lencho’s letter but soon he became serious and was moved by the writer’s faith in God. He didn’t want to shake Lencho’s faith. So, he decided to collect, money and send it to Lencho on behalf of God.
Oral Comprehension Check (Page No. 7)
Question 1. Was Lencho surprised to find a letter for him with money in it?
Answer: Lencho was not surprised to find a letter with money from God as he believed that God will help him.
Question 2. What made Lencho angry?
Answer: When he finished counting the money, he found only seventy pesos. But he had demanded a hundred pesos. He was confident that God could neither make a mistake nor deny him what he had requested for. Therefore, he concluded that the post office employees must have taken the remaining thirty pesos
Thinking about the Text
Question 1. Who does Lencho have complete faith in? Which sentences in the story tell you this?
Answer: Lencho has complete faith in God as he is instructed that God knows everything and helps us in our problems. There are few sentences which show this.
- But in the hearts of all who lived in that solitary house in the middle of the valley, there was a single hope help from God.
- All through the night, Lencho thought only of his one hope: the help of God, whose eyes, as he had been instructed, see everything, even what is deep in one’s conscience.
- “God”, he wrote, “if you don’t help me, my family and I will go hungry this year”.
- He wrote ‘To God’ on the envelope, put the letter inside and still troubled, went to town.
- God could not have made a mistake, nor could he have denied Lencho what he had requested.
Question 2. Why does the postmaster send money to Lencho? Why does he sign the letter God?
Answer: The postmaster sends money to Lencho in order to keep Lencho’s faith in God alive and firm as he was completely moved by it. When postmaster reads the letter of Lencho to God, he becomes serious and does not want to shake his faith and decides to answer the letter. He gathers money with the help of his post office employees and friends on behalf of God and signs the letter ‘God’ so that Lencho’s faith does not get shaken.
Question 3. Did Lencho try to find out who had sent the money to him? Why or why not?
Answer: No, Lencho did not try to find out who had sent the money to him. This was because he had great confidence in God and never suspected that it could be someone else other than God who would send him the money. His faith in God was so strong that he believed that God had sent him the money.
Question 4. Who does Lencho think has taken the rest of the money? What is the irony in the situation? (Remember that the irony of a situation is an unexpected aspect of it. An ironic situation is strange or amusing because it is the opposite of what is expected).
Answer: Lencho thinks that the post office employees have taken the rest of the money as he had demanded a hundred pesos from God and in the letter, there were only seventy pesos and God cannot make such a mistake. So, he assumes that they have stolen the money.
The irony in this situation is that Lencho suspects those people who helped him in his problem and tried to keep his faith alive in God.
Question 5. Are there people like Lencho in the real world? What kind of a person would you say he is? You may select appropriate words from the box to answer the question.
| Greedy Naive Stupid Ungrateful Selfish Comical Unquestioning |
Answer: It is almost impossible to find a person like Lencho as he is an unquestioning and naive kind of person. He is not stupid if he doesn’t know who has sent him money or a letter will reach God without any address. It is Lencho’s faith in God. In real world, people are selfish and greedy and Lencho is totally lovable and different.
Question 6. There are two kinds of conflict in the story between humans and nature and between humans themselves. How are these conflicts illustrated?
Answer: Conflict between Humans and Nature: The conflict between humans and nature is illustrated by the destruction of Lencho’s crop by the hailstorm as Lencho was expecting a good rain to have good harvest as that was the only hope he had for his earning. He worked so hard to feed his family, but nature turned violent and destroyed everything.
Conflict between Humans and Humans: The story also illustrated another conflict, between humans themselves as the postmaster along with his friends and staff sent Lencho money that Lencho demanded from God although they didn’t know Lencho. Lencho blamed them for taking away some amount of money. He called them “a bunch of crooks”. This shows that man does not have faith in other men, thereby giving rise to this conflict.
Thinking about Language
I. Look at the following sentence from the story.
Suddenly a strong wind began to blow and along with the rain very large hailstones began to fall.
‘Hailstones’ are small balls of ice that fall like rain. A storm in which hailstones fall is a ‘hailstorm’. You know that a storm is a bad weather with strong winds, rain, thunder and lightning.
There are different names in different parts of the world for storms, depending on their nature. Can you match the names in the box with their descriptions below, and fill in the blanks?
| gale, whirlwind, cyclone, hurricane, tornado, typhoon. |
Question 1. A violent tropical storm in which strong winds move in a circle _ _ c _ _ _ _
Answer: cyclone
Question 2. An extremely strong wind; __ a __ __ .
Answer: gale
Question 3. A violent tropical storm with very strong wind _ _ p _ _ _ _.
Answer: typhoon
Question 4. A violent storm whose centre is a cloud in the shape of a funnel _ _ _ n _ _ _.
Answer: tornado
Question 5. A violent storm with very strong winds, especially in the Western Atlantic Ocean _ _ r _ _ _ _ _ _.
Answer: Hurricane
Question 6. A very strong wind that moves very fast in a spinning movement and causes a
lot of damage _ _ _ _ l _ _ _ _.
Answer: whirlwind
Question II. Notice how the word ‘hope’ is used in these sentences from the story:
(a) I hope it (the hailstorm) passes quickly.
(b) There was a single hope: help from God.
In the first example, ‘hope’ is a verb which means you wish for something to happen. In the second example, it is a noun meaning a chance for something to happen.
Match the sentences in column A with the meaning of ‘hope’ in column B.
| A | B |
| 1. Will you get the subjects you want to study in college? I hope so. | a feeling that something good will probably happen. |
| 2. I hope you don’t mind my saying this but 1 don’t like the way you are arguing. | thinking that this would happen (it may or may not have happened.) |
| 3. This discovery will give new hope to HIV/AIDS sufferers. | stopped believing that this good thing would happen. |
| 4. We were hoping against hope that the judges would not notice our mistakes. | wanting something to happen (and thinking it quite possible) |
| 5. I called early in the hope of speaking to her before she went to school. | showing concern that what you say should not offend or disturb the other person a way of being polite. |
| 6. Just when everybody had given up hope, the fishermen came back, seven days after the cyclone. | wishing for something to happen, although this is very unlikely. |
Answer:
| A | B |
| 1. Will you get the subjects you want to study in college? I hope so. | thinking that this would happen (it may or may not have happened). |
| 2. I hope you don’t mind my saying this but 1 don’t like the way you are arguing. | showing concern that what you say should not offend or disturb the other person a way of being polite. |
| 3. This discovery will give new hope to HIV/AIDS sufferers. | a feeling that something good will probably happen. |
| 4. We were hoping against hope that the judges would not notice our mistakes. | wishing for something to happen, although this is very unlikely. |
| 5. I called early in the hope of speaking to her before she went to school. | wanting something to happen (and thinking it quite possible) |
| 6. Just when everybody had given up hope, the fishermen came back, seven days after the cyclone. | stopped believing that this good thing would happen. |
Question III. Relative Clauses
Look at these sentences
(a) All morning Lencho — who knew his fields intimately — looked at the sky.
(b) The woman, who was preparing supper, replied, “Yes, God willing.’’
The italicised parts of the sentences give us more information about Lencho and the woman. We call them relative clauses. Notice that they begin with a relative pronoun and which.
The relative clauses in (a) and (b) above are called non-defining because we already know the identity of the person they describe. Lencho is a particular person, and there is a particular woman he speaks to. We don’t need the information in the relative clause to pick these people out from a larger set.
A non-defining relative clause usually has a comma in front of it and a
comma after it (some writers use a dash (—) instead, as in the story). If the relative clause comes at the end , we just pull a full stop.
Join the sentences given below using who, whom, whose, which, as suggested.
Question 1. I often go to Mumbai. Mumbai is the commercial capital of India, (which)
Answer: I often go to Mumbai which is the commercial capital of India.
Question 2. My mother is going to host a TV show on cooking. She cooks very well, (who)
Answer: My Mother who cooks very well, is going to host a TV show on cooking.
Question 3. These sportsperson are going to meet the President. Their performance has been excellent, (whose)
Answer: These sportspersons, whose performance has been excellent, are going to meet the President.
Question 4. Lencho prayed to God. His eyes see into our minds, (whose)
Answer: Lencho prayed to God, whose eyes see into our minds.
Question 5. This man cheated me. I trusted him. (whom)
Answer: This man whom I trusted cheated me.
IV. Using Negatives for Emphasis
We know that sentences with words such as no, not or nothing show the absence of something, or contradict something. For example:
(a) This year we will have no corn. (Corn will be absent)
(b) The hail has left nothing. (Absence of a crop)
(c) These aren’t raindrops falling from the sky, they are new coins.
(Contradicts the common idea of what the drops of water falling from the sky are)
But sometimes negative words are used just to emphasise an idea. Look at these sentences from the story:
(d) Lencho…had done nothing else but see the sky towards the northeast. (He had done only this)
(e) The man went out for no other reason than to have the pleasure of feeling the rain on his body. (He had only this reason)
(f) Lencho showed not the slightest surprise on seeing the money. (He showed no surprise at all)
Now look back at example (c). Notice that the contradiction in fact serves to
emphasise the value or usefulness of the rain to the farmer.
Find sentences in the story with negative words, which express the following ideas emphatically.
(1) The trees lost all their leaves.
_______________________________________
(2) The letter was addressed to God himself.
_______________________________________
(3) The postman saw this address for the first time in his career.
_______________________________________
Answer:
1. Not a leaf remained on the trees.
2. It was nothing less than a letter to God.
3. Never in his career as a postman had he seen that address.
V. Metaphors
The word metaphor comes from a Greek word meaning ‘transfer’. Metaphors compare two things or ideas: a quality or feature of one thing is transferred to another thing. Some common metaphors are
• the leg of the table: The leg supports our body. So the object that supports a table is described as a leg.
• the heart of the city: The heart is an important organ in the centre of our body. So this word is used to describe the central area of a city.
In pairs, find metaphors from the story to complete the table below. Try to say what qualities are being compared. One has been done for you.
| Object | Metaphor | Quality or feature Compared |
| Cloud | Huge mountains of cloud | The mass or hugeness of mountains |
| Raindrpos | ||
| Hailstones | ||
| Locusts | An epidemic (a disease) that spreads very rapidly and leaves many people dead | |
| An axe of a man |
Answer:
| Object | Metaphor | Quality or feature Compared |
| Cloud | Huge mountains of cloud | The mass or hugeness of mountains |
| Raindrpos | New coins | Excessive value like money and metal |
| Hailstones | Frozen pearls | Ornamental value, hugeness of ice. |
| Locusts | Plague of locusts | An epidemic (a disease) that spreads very rapidly and leaves many people dead |
| Farmer | An axe of a man | A hard-working and laborious person. |