This is the page for Chapter 1 of the NCERT Class 10 English textbook First Flight — the story “A Letter to God”, a 15-page chapter that also carries the poems “Dust of Snow” and “Fire and Ice” on its final pages.
The official A Letter to God Class 10 chapter PDF, from the NCERT edition in use for the 2026-27 session, is right below. Use this page to understand that file — the sections ahead explain Lencho’s faith, the irony of the ending, both Frost poems, and what every exercise block is testing.
Download the A Letter to God Class 10 Chapter PDF
The file below is the official NCERT edition of First Flight, published by NCERT on its own portal, so it is always the current version of the text your teacher and the board use.
Download A Letter to God Class 10 chapter PDF and keep it open while you work through the story, the exercises and the poems on this page.
| What the chapter holds | Count | Where it is used |
|---|---|---|
| Printed pages | 15 | |
| Figures with NCERT captions | 2 | |
| Tables | 2 | |
| Exercise questions | 18 | answered in our NCERT Solutions |
| In-text questions | 9 | |
| Activities | 1 | |
| Official NCERT PDF | Download the chapter PDF | the chapter exactly as NCERT publishes it |
A Letter to God: Chapter at a Glance
The table below gives the chapter’s shape at a glance — how many sections, figures and questions it holds.
Inside the printed book, the parts of this chapter fall in this order:
- Before You Read — the opening question about faith (p. 1)
- Money Order activity — how money travels through the post office (pp. 1–2)
- The story of Lencho and the hailstorm (pp. 3–7)
- Three Oral Comprehension Checks that pause the reading (pp. 5–7)
- Thinking about the Text — six questions on the story (p. 7)
- Thinking about Language — storm words and “hope” (p. 8)
- Grammar: relative clauses, negatives for emphasis, metaphors (pp. 9–11)
- Speaking, Listening and Writing tasks (pp. 11–12)
- Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow” (p. 14) and “Fire and Ice” (p. 15)
No formulas appear anywhere in this chapter — it is a literature and language lesson, so the work is reading, reasoning and sentence-building rather than calculation.
What This Chapter Covers: Story, Exercises and Poems
This is a story chapter with a language-work section and two short poems attached. The parts come in the order the book prints them, including one section students can safely skip:
- Before You Read (p. 1) — the book opens with one prompt: “They say faith can move mountains. But what should we put our faith in?” Everything in the story is an answer to that question.
- The Money Order activity (pp. 1–2) — the book teaches how money is sent by post: buy a form, fill it in, pay the amount plus charges, keep the acknowledgement counterfoil. This is not a side task — the whole plot turns on money sent through the post office.
- The story (pp. 3–7) — Lencho is a farmer whose ripe corn a sudden hailstorm destroys. His one hope is God. He writes asking for a hundred pesos, addresses the envelope “To God”, and posts it.
- Three Oral Comprehension Checks (pp. 5, 6, 7) — short question sets that stop the reading at three points so you can check you have followed the plot.
- Thinking about the Text (p. 7) — six questions on faith, the postmaster’s motive, character judgement and irony.
- Thinking about Language (p. 8) — storm vocabulary (gale, whirlwind, cyclone, hurricane, tornado, typhoon) and “hope” used as a noun and as a verb.
- Three grammar blocks (pp. 9–11) — non-defining relative clauses, negatives used for emphasis, and metaphors.
- Speaking, Listening and Writing (pp. 11–12) — a class discussion about miracles, a listening table, and a poster task on saving water.
- Two poems (pp. 14–15) — Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow” and “Fire and Ice”, each with its own glossary and Thinking about the Poem questions.
- The teacher pages (pp. 12–13) — the pages headed “What We Have Done” and “What You Can Do” are notes printed for the teacher, not exercises for students, so you can safely skip them.
Key Ideas: Faith, Irony and the Two Frost Poems
The ideas in this chapter are simple, but the questions on them are subtle: they ask what faith does to a person’s judgement, how good intentions can backfire, and how small or opposing forces shape a human life.
Lencho’s Faith and the Letter to God
Lencho is a farmer whose ripe corn is destroyed when the rain turns to hail. After a sorrowful night, his family’s only hope is help from God, whose eyes, he has been taught, see everything, even what is deep in one’s conscience.
(NCERT, p. 5) The story calls him “an ox of a man, working like an animal in the fields” — a hard worker, not a lazy one — and adds that he still knows how to write. Both details matter: the failure is not his fault, and he can send the letter himself.
(NCERT, p. 5) He asks for a hundred pesos so he can sow his field again and live until the next crop. He writes “To God” on the envelope and drops it into the mailbox. (NCERT, p. 5) Fix this in your mind: when the money arrives, he shows not the slightest surprise.
His confidence is absolute — “God could not have made a mistake”. That unshakeable certainty is the engine of the ending. (NCERT, p. 6)
The Postmaster’s Answer and the Irony
At the post office, an employee shows the letter to the postmaster. He laughs at first, then turns serious: “What faith! I wish I had the faith of the man who wrote this letter.” (NCERT, p. 5) To avoid shaking that faith, he decides to answer the letter himself.
He asks his employees for money, gives part of his own salary, and collects from friends “for an act of charity” — but the hundred pesos cannot be gathered. (NCERT, p. 6) He sends a little more than half — the seventy pesos of Lencho’s second letter — and signs the reply with a single word: “God”.
(NCERT, p. 6) Model answer — Thinking about the Text, Q. 4:
Lencho thinks the post office employees have taken the rest of the money. The irony is that the postmaster and his staff are the only people who helped him — they collected the money and signed it “God”. The book defines irony as the opposite of what is expected (NCERT, p. 7). The reader expects gratitude; Lencho gives accusation instead.
The Two Conflicts in the Story
Question 6 asks about two conflicts. The first, between humans and nature, is the hailstorm: it destroys the corn, the flowers and the leaves, and leaves the family facing a hungry year. (NCERT, pp. 4–5) The second conflict, between humans themselves, appears at the end: Lencho’s accusation breaks trust with the very people who helped him.
(NCERT, p. 7) The second conflict is the human cost of the first — the storm leaves Lencho helpless, and helplessness turns into suspicion of his only helpers.
Dust of Snow: A Small Moment That Changes a Mood
This eight-line poem is the chapter’s reminder that small things matter. A crow shakes dust of snow from a hemlock tree onto the poet, and the moment “saved some part of a day I had rued” — a day he had regretted.
(NCERT, p. 14) The book’s questions push you to see why Frost chose a crow and a hemlock instead of a beautiful bird and tree. Crows and hemlocks are dark images — the hemlock is even a poisonous plant — yet here they produce a positive change of mood. That is the poem’s point: a tiny, unremarkable event can rescue a day.
Its rhyme scheme is abab cdcd — crow and snow, me and tree, heart and part, mood and rued. The matching rhymes keep the small moment neat and complete, just like the mood it restores.
Fire and Ice: Desire and Hate as Destroyers
This poem weighs two ways the world could end. Frost connects fire to desire — the emotions he has “tasted of” — and ice to hate. (NCERT, p. 15) The book’s question about symbols offers the associations: greed, avarice, fury and lust belong to fire; coldness, cruelty, indifference, rigidity and hatred belong to ice.
Do not swap them — the exam question will expect fire = desire and ice = hate. (NCERT, p. 15) The rhyme scheme is abaa cdcdc: the first stanza locks fire, desire and fire together; the second gives ice, twice and suffice the final sound. The poem literally ends on an ice-rhyme, matching the closing claim that ice alone “would suffice” to destroy.
(NCERT, p. 15)
Figure Walkthrough: The Illustration at the Post Office Window
The chapter carries two illustrations, and each sits at a deliberate spot. Knowing why they are placed there helps you read the story.
The key image sits on page 6, at the exact moment the irony completes. Lencho has just counted the money, found only seventy pesos, and shown no surprise — only anger.
The picture catches him immediately asking for paper and ink to write his second letter — the one that accuses the post office employees. (NCERT, p. 6) The book places it here, not at the hailstorm or the first letter, because this frame is the turning point of the story.
The second illustration belongs to the language-work half of the chapter. Its printed caption ties it to the exercises that strengthen students’ grasp of the story’s vocabulary and introduce related words — the storm names on page 8, for instance. (NCERT, p. 12)
The book says nothing more about this picture, so read it as a set-piece for the exercise pages rather than a scene from the plot.
Key Words and Terms Defined in the Chapter
The book explains unfamiliar words in the margins as you read, and it defines three more terms inside its exercises. Both sets are collected here so you do not have to flip pages.
Seven story words are glossed in the margins:
| Word | Page | Plain meaning |
|---|---|---|
| crest | p. 3 | the top of a hill |
| draped | p. 4 | covered, as if with cloth |
| locusts | p. 4 | insects that fly in large swarms and destroy crops |
| conscience | p. 5 | an inner sense of right and wrong |
| peso | p. 5 | currency used in several Latin American countries |
| amiable | p. 5 | friendly and pleasant |
| contentment | p. 6 | satisfaction |
Four poem words are glossed:
| Word | Page | Plain meaning |
|---|---|---|
| hemlock | p. 14 | a poisonous plant (tree) with small white flowers |
| rued | p. 14 | held in regret |
| perish | p. 15 | die |
| suffice | p. 15 | be sufficient |
Three terms are defined inside the exercises, not the margins. Irony (p. 7) is an unexpected aspect of a situation — strange or amusing because it is the opposite of what is expected.
A non-defining relative clause (p. 9) adds extra information about a person whose identity we already know, set off by commas. The commas signal the clause is extra — removing it does not change who the sentence is about.
A metaphor (p. 11) transfers a quality of one thing to another, as in “the leg of the table”. The word comes from a Greek word meaning “transfer”.
The three grammar blocks each build one skill. The table below shows the rule and an original sentence that uses it — try building your own on the same pattern.
| Grammar block | The book’s rule | Original sentence on the same pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Non-defining relative clauses (p. 9) | Extra information about someone we can already identify; comma before and after the clause | “Lencho, who had watched the sky all morning, could not accept that the money had gone astray.” |
| Negatives for emphasis (p. 10) | Negative words can contradict, or they can emphasise how strong an idea is | “Lencho had not the slightest doubt about who had sent the money.” |
| Metaphors (p. 11) | A quality of one thing is transferred to another | “The storm was a thief that stole the whole harvest in one hour.” |
Common Mistakes in A Letter to God (and the Corrections)
The mistakes students make in this chapter are mostly misreadings — of Lencho, of the irony, of the poems’ symbols — rather than wrong facts. The table names each trap and its correction.
| What students get wrong | Correct reading | How to check your answer |
|---|---|---|
| Calling Lencho greedy | The book’s own word box offers naive and unquestioning. His anger is the product of absolute faith, not selfishness. (NCERT, p. 7) | Ask: does he spend anything on himself? He wants the money to sow his field again. |
| Missing the direction of the irony | The generous helper (the postmaster) is called a crook; the irony is not simply that Lencho is poor. | State both halves: what the postmaster did, and what Lencho called him. |
| Dropping the commas in a non-defining relative clause | The rule is a comma before and after the clause; without them the clause type changes. (NCERT, p. 9) | Read the sentence aloud and pause at both commas. |
| Reading the crow and hemlock as purely bad omens | The poem’s point is that these negative images produce a positive change of mood. (NCERT, p. 14) | Check the day’s outcome: it is “saved”, not ruined. |
| Swapping the symbols in Fire and Ice | Fire is desire; ice is hate. (NCERT, p. 15) | Self-test: greed, fury, lust belong to fire; coldness, cruelty, indifference to ice. |
| Confusing the two conflicts | Human vs nature is the hailstorm; human vs human is the broken trust over the money. (NCERT, p. 7) | Name the cause of each: the storm took the crop, the accusation took the trust. |
Exam Notes: What the Chapter’s Exercises Ask You to Do
The chapter’s own exercises show what a student is expected to take from it. Here is what each block is actually testing.
| Exercise block | Where it sits | What it is actually testing |
|---|---|---|
| Oral Comprehension Check 1 | p. 5 | Following the opening: what Lencho hoped for, why raindrops were “new coins”, how the rain changed, his feelings when the hail stopped. |
| Oral Comprehension Check 2 | p. 6 | The turning point: who Lencho had faith in, who read the letter, what the postmaster did. |
| Oral Comprehension Check 3 | p. 7 | The ending: Lencho’s surprise (or none) and what made him angry. |
| Thinking about the Text | p. 7 | Interpretation and judgement: faith, the postmaster’s motive, character, irony, the two conflicts. |
| Thinking about Language I | p. 8 | Storm vocabulary: matching gale, whirlwind, cyclone, hurricane, tornado and typhoon to their meanings. |
| Thinking about Language II | p. 8 | “Hope” as noun and verb, judged from context. |
| Relative Clauses | p. 9 | Joining sentences with who, whom, whose and which, keeping the commas. |
| Using Negatives | p. 10 | Finding negative words that emphasise rather than contradict. |
| Metaphors | p. 11 | Spotting transferred qualities in the story’s own images. |
| Dust of Snow questions | p. 14 | Symbolic reading: why a crow and a hemlock, and how the mood changes. |
| Fire and Ice questions | p. 15 | Symbolism and rhyme scheme, and how the rhyme serves the contrast. |
What a full-marks answer needs to include:
- Irony answer: state both halves — what the postmaster did, and what Lencho accused him of.
- Character answer: pick a word from the box (naive or unquestioning) and support it with Lencho’s behaviour.
- Poem answers: name the symbol first (fire = desire, ice = hate), then connect it to the poem’s idea.
Textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical, so check the current official CBSE Class 10 English syllabus once before you decide how much weight to give each part.
Night-Before Recap of the Whole Chapter
The whole chapter, compressed, in your own words — read this in under a minute.
- Story arc: a hailstorm destroys Lencho’s ripe corn; he writes to God for a hundred pesos; the postmaster collects money from employees and friends and sends seventy pesos, signed “God”; Lencho, angry at the shortfall, writes again and calls the employees “a bunch of crooks”. (NCERT, pp. 4–6)
- Irony: the unexpected opposite — the man who helped Lencho is the man Lencho accuses.
- Two conflicts: human versus nature is the hailstorm; human versus human is the broken trust over the money. (NCERT, p. 7)
- Dust of Snow: a crow shakes snow from a hemlock onto the poet — a negative image brings a positive change of mood; rhyme scheme abab cdcd. (NCERT, p. 14)
- Fire and Ice: fire is desire, ice is hate, and each is enough to destroy the world; rhyme scheme abaa cdcdc. (NCERT, p. 15)
- Grammar in one line: relative clauses carry commas, negatives can emphasise, metaphors transfer qualities.
Related Resources: Other Class 10 English Chapters
Keep moving through the book — you can open the rest of First Flight from these pages.
The Class 10 English notes page lists both First Flight and Footprints without Feet. The next chapter in First Flight is Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. For everything else, use the Class 10 hub or the main CBSE Class 10 notes page.
Sources and Data Verification
The facts on this page come from the book itself, so the exact edition matters.
- This page describes Chapter 1 of NCERT’s Class 10 English textbook First Flight — the story “A Letter to God” — in the official edition published on ncert.nic.in.
- The poems “Dust of Snow” and “Fire and Ice” sit on the final pages of this same chapter and are covered here as part of it.
- This listing is maintained for the current academic session using the NCERT information available to us.
- NCERT settles textbook editions and PDFs; CBSE settles the curriculum, syllabus and examinations.
Reference: NCERT Class 10 English textbook, chapter 1, official edition on ncert.nic.in.
Frequently Asked Questions About A Letter to God Class 10
The questions students search for after reading this chapter, answered straight from the story and the poems.
What is the irony in the story A Letter to God?
It is the unexpected opposite of expectation. The postmaster and his staff are the only people who help Lencho, yet Lencho’s second letter calls the post office employees “a bunch of crooks”. The book defines irony as an unexpected aspect of a situation — the opposite of what is expected (NCERT, p. 7). Instead of gratitude, the helper receives accusation.
Is Lencho greedy or naive in A Letter to God?
The better reading is naive and unquestioning, not greedy. He asks for exactly what he needs — a hundred pesos to sow his field again and live until the crop comes. (NCERT, p. 5) The book’s own word box offers naive and unquestioning among the options for describing him (NCERT, p. 7).
His anger at seventy pesos flows from absolute faith: “God could not have made a mistake” (NCERT, p. 6).
Why did the postmaster send money to Lencho and sign the letter God?
To preserve Lencho’s faith. The postmaster first laughed at the letter, then turned serious: “What faith! I wish I had the faith of the man who wrote this letter.”
(NCERT, p. 5) So he decided to answer the letter himself, collected money from employees, his own salary and friends “for an act of charity”, and signed the reply “God” so Lencho would believe it really came from God. (NCERT, p. 6)
What do fire and ice stand for in the poem Fire and Ice?
Fire stands for desire and the emotions that burn — greed, avarice, fury, lust — while ice stands for hate and the emotions that freeze — coldness, cruelty, indifference, rigidity. (NCERT, p. 15) The poem says either alone is enough to destroy. The speaker first sides with those who favour fire, then admits that for destruction, ice “would suffice”. (NCERT, p. 15)
Why does Frost use a crow and a hemlock tree in Dust of Snow?
To show that even dark, negative images can produce a positive change of mood. A crow is not the beautiful bird poems usually name, and the hemlock is a poisonous plant — yet the dust of snow the crow shakes down “saved some part of a day I had rued”.
(NCERT, p. 14) The point is that a tiny, unremarkable moment — from a source we would not expect — can rescue a day.
Do I need to study Dust of Snow and Fire and Ice with this chapter?
In the book, both poems are printed on the final pages of this same chapter, so a full reading of Chapter 1 includes them. (NCERT, pp. 14–15) Whether they are examinable in a given year depends on the current official CBSE Class 10 English syllabus — textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical.
Reference: NCERT Class 10 English textbook, chapter 1, official edition on ncert.nic.in.
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