Class 10 English Footprints without Feet Chapter 5 Footprints without Feet Notes in English

1The Author and the Opening Note

The story closes with the name H.G. WELLS. As general knowledge (not stated in the book), H.G. Wells was an English writer famous for early science fiction; this chapter is adapted from his novel The Invisible Man, which the book lists under “Suggested reading”.

The book’s opening note asks two things: can a man become invisible, and does the scientist who learns how to do it use or misuse his discovery? Keep the second question in mind; the whole story answers it.

2The Story, Step by Step

2.1 Footprints Appear from Nowhere

Two boys in the middle of London are startled to see fresh, muddy marks of bare feet on the steps of a house, with nobody standing there. As they watch, a new footmark appears. They follow the trail down the street until the marks grow faint and vanish.

The answer to the puzzle: the boys were trailing Griffin, a scientist who had found a way to make the human body transparent. After experiment upon experiment, he swallowed certain rare drugs. His body became “as transparent as a sheet of glass”, yet it stayed just as solid as glass. He could not be seen, but he could still be touched and could still leave marks.

2.2 Why Griffin Is a Homeless Wanderer

2.3 A Night in a Big London Store

Griffin easily shook off the boys, but he had picked a terrible season to roam without clothes: it was mid-winter and bitterly cold. He slipped into a big London store to keep warm.

2.4 Drury Lane: A Disguise and a Crime

Next he tried the stock of a theatrical company, hoping for clothes and for something to hide “the empty space above his shoulders”. Shivering, he hurried to Drury Lane, “the centre of the theatre world”, and found a suitable shop.

• He went upstairs unseen and came out wearing bandages round his forehead, dark glasses, a false nose, big bushy side-whiskers and a large hat.
• To get out without being seen, he callously attacked the shopkeeper from behind and took all the money he could find.

2.5 Arrival at Iping

Wanting to leave crowded London behind, Griffin went by train to the village of Iping and booked two rooms at the local inn. A stranger arriving in winter was unusual anyway; one who looked like this got the whole village gossiping.

Mrs Hall, the landlord’s wife, tried hard to be friendly. Griffin did not want to chat and told her he had come to Iping out of “a desire for solitude”, did not want to be disturbed in his work, and that an accident had affected his face.

2.6 The Curious Episode in the Study

2.7 The Furniture Comes Alive at the Inn

Later that same morning, the landlord and Mrs Hall, up early, found the scientist’s door wide open. Normally it was locked, and he flew into a rage if anyone went in. They peeped in, saw nobody, and went in to look around.

• The bedclothes were cold, so he must have been up for a while.
• The clothes and bandages he always wore were scattered about the room.
• Mrs Hall heard a sniff right beside her ear.
• The hat on the bedpost jumped up and struck her in the face.
• The bedroom chair sprang into the air, rushed at her legs first, pushed both of them out, and the door seemed to slam and lock behind them.

Mrs Hall nearly fell down the stairs in hysterics. She was sure the room was haunted by spirits that the stranger had somehow put into her furniture. She wailed that her poor mother used to sit in that very chair.

2.8 Suspicion and the Unmasking

The village constable was secretly sent for. Without waiting for him, Mrs Hall faced the scientist, who had somehow appeared out of his empty bedroom, and demanded to know what he had done to her chair and how he could leave an empty room and enter a locked one.

Always quick-tempered, he became furious and shouted, “You don’t understand who or what I am!” In about a minute he tore off the bandages, whiskers, spectacles and even the nose. The terrified people in the bar were staring at a headless man.

2.9 Mr Jaffers and the Escape

3Visible or Invisible?

3.1 What Gives Griffin Away

4Characters

4.1 Griffin in Detail

• Brilliant: after experiment upon experiment, he proves the human body can be made invisible.
• Lawless and selfish: sets fire to a house, breaks open boxes in a store, robs a shopkeeper and a clergyman.
• Cruel: the book says he attacked the shopkeeper “callously”, that is, without any pity.
• Hot-tempered and secretive: furious if anyone enters his room; unmasks himself in a rage.
• Lonely: homeless, always on the run, wanting only solitude.

5Themes and Message

5.1 The Big Ideas

5.2 Key Lines and What They Mean

6Words to Know

7The Book’s Questions, Answered Briefly

7.1 Read and Find Out

7.2 Think About It

1. Griffin as a lawless person: he treats the law as if it did not apply to him. Burning his landlord’s house, looting the store, beating the shopkeeper, stealing the clergyman’s money, terrifying the Halls and knocking out a constable on duty all show a man who thinks only of what he wants.
2. Griffin as a scientist: his skill is beyond doubt, since he achieved what nobody else had. But a scientist should use a discovery responsibly. Griffin keeps it to himself and turns it into a tool for crime, so he is a gifted scientist and a poor human being.

7.3 Talk About It (points to discuss)

1. Becoming invisible: possible gains are going anywhere unseen, studying wildlife closely or helping in rescue work; the drawbacks are cold, hunger, loneliness, being bumped into, and the strong temptation to do wrong, as the story shows.
2. Invisible forces: magnetism, gravity, air, heat and sound waves, and tiny particles such as atoms, cannot be seen with the naked eye. If they could be seen, the world would look crowded and confusing, though some dangers might be easier to avoid.
3. Why glass and water are transparent: light passes through them without being blocked or scattered much. A truly transparent human is not possible with today’s science, but science-fiction writers have often imagined things that later came true.

Suggested reading in the book: The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, ‘As Far As the Human Eye Can See’ by Isaac Asimov, It Happened Tomorrow edited by Bal Phondke.