Class 10 English First Flight Chapter 1, A Letter to God by Mexican author G.L. Fuentes, tells the ironic story of Lencho, a hardworking farmer whose ripe cornfield is destroyed by a devastating hailstorm and who writes a letter directly to God asking for a hundred pesos. The chapter PDF also contains two famous short poems by Robert Frost: Dust of Snow and Fire and Ice.
What Class 10 English (First Flight) Chapter 1 Covers
Prose: A Letter to God (G.L. Fuentes) follows Lencho’s unshakeable faith in God after hailstones blanket his valley like salt, destroying his corn crop completely. He mails a letter addressed ‘To God’ requesting 100 pesos to sow his field again and live until the next harvest. Moved by Lencho’s faith, the postmaster collects 70 pesos from his employees and his own salary and signs the envelope ‘God’. Instead of being surprised, Lencho counts the money, gets angry at the missing 30 pesos, and writes a second letter begging God not to send the rest through the mail because ‘the post office employees are a bunch of crooks’.
Poems: Dust of Snow & Fire and Ice (Robert Frost) Dust of Snow (two four-line stanzas, rhyme scheme $abab\;cdcd$) shows how a simple natural moment—a crow shaking down dust of snow from a poisonous hemlock tree—lifts the poet’s depressive mood and ‘saves some part of a day I had rued’. Fire and Ice ($aba\;abc\;bcb$) equates ‘fire’ with human desire/greed and ‘ice’ with hatred/cold indifference, concluding that either is sufficient to bring about the destruction of the world.
Exercises in Chapter 1
- Oral Comprehension Check & Thinking about the Text ask what Lencho hoped for, why he said the raindrops were like ‘new coins’, why the postmaster sent money to Lencho and signed the letter ‘God’, and explain the irony at the end of the story.
- Thinking about the Poem explores how Frost subverts conventional symbols of gloom (a crow and a hemlock tree) in Dust of Snow, and what ‘fire’ and ‘ice’ stand for in Fire and Ice.
Read Class 10 English (First Flight) Chapter 1 Online
More Chapters
- Next: Chapter 2: Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (with Poem: A Tiger in the Zoo)
- Workbook companion: Words and Expressions II Unit 1: A Letter to God
- All English (First Flight) chapters and the other Class 10 books: Class 10 NCERT books 2026-27
- All Class 1 to 12 NCERT Textbooks: NCERT Books PDF (Class 1–12)
- Every book chapter by chapter: NCERT chapter wise PDF
FAQ
Why did the postmaster send money to Lencho, and why did he sign the letter ‘God’?
The postmaster was deeply moved by Lencho’s absolute, unquestioning faith in God and did not want that faith to be shaken. To keep Lencho’s belief intact, he collected seventy pesos from his employees, friends and part of his own salary, and signed the letter ‘God’ so Lencho would believe God Himself had answered him.
What is the irony at the end of ‘A Letter to God’?
The irony is that the very post office employees who generously donated part of their salaries to help Lencho and preserve his faith in God are suspected by Lencho of stealing the remaining thirty pesos and called ‘a bunch of crooks’.