Footprints without Feet · Class 10 English · Footprints Without Feet: 135 MCQs with answers

The fresh muddy prints of bare feet on the steps of a London house

They wondered what a barefooted man was doing there, and where he had gone.

A scientist who had discovered how to make the body transparent

The explanation, the story says, was really simple enough.

By experimenting repeatedly and finally swallowing certain rare drugs

The experiments were meant to prove that a human body could be made invisible.

A brilliant scientist who was a man with little respect for the law

Both halves are stated in one sentence, and neither is ever withdrawn.

He set fire to the house

The punishment is wildly out of proportion to the offence.

He stepped in some mud and left footprints as he walked

A perfect scientific disguise, defeated by a wet London street.

The muddy prints appearing along a London street with nobody above them

The title is entirely literal.

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For warmth, instead of walking about the streets

The clothes, the food and the bed came afterwards.

On a pile of quilts

It is the most comfortable he has been since the fire.

The centre of the theatre world

Shivering with cold, he hurried there.

All the money he could find

That stolen money is what pays his bill at Iping — for a while.

An apparently empty room, with the desk open and the money gone

'Extraordinary affair!' he kept saying for the rest of the day.

A sniff close to her ear

The invisible man was standing beside her.

Witchcraft

People explain what they cannot understand with the nearest idea they have.

Jaffers is knocked unconscious and Griffin escapes entirely

Nobody knew where to lay hands on him.

A fresh footmark appeared out of empty air in front of them

More followed, one after another, down the steps and along the street.

It turned as clear as window glass, and as solid as glass

The second half of the comparison is what causes all his later trouble.

The landlord disliked him and tried to eject him from the house

An ordinary man would have argued, or moved.

Because invisibility worked only on his body, so clothes would show where he was

An invisible man in a coat is simply a coat walking along a street.

A homeless drifter with nothing to wear, without money and quite invisible

All three losses are entirely his own doing.

1 and 3 only

His body remained as solid as glass throughout.

Whether the scientist uses or misuses his discovery

The fire answers it before the story is properly under way.

The mud — the accident that makes an invisible man visible

The fire was deliberate, the boys never learn who he is, and the drugs were his own.

He did it deliberately, after repeated experiments, by swallowing rare drugs

The accident in the story is the mud, not the invisibility.

Wells praises and condemns Griffin in a single sentence, and never separates the two

Brilliant and lawless: the answer should hold both at once.

A mystery in the street is explained by a brilliant, lawless man with nothing left

The footprints, the drugs, the fire and the losses are the four beats.

He had proved by repeated experiment that a body could be made invisible

The story calls him brilliant without qualification on that point.

It sets up both the science and the character before the trouble begins

Every later disaster is a consequence of something established here.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include at least six of: the boys and the muddy prints on the London steps; the footmark appearing from nowhere and the trail down the street; the prints fading away; the explanation that they were following a scientist; the experiments and the rare drugs; transpare…

Invisibility needed a naked body, and the air was bitterly cold

He simply could not do without clothes.

Clothe and feed himself without regard to expense

He broke open boxes and wrappers to get at what he wanted.

Shoes, an overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat

With them he became a man fully dressed, and for that reason a man anybody could see.

Cold meat and coffee, then sweets and wine

The meat and coffee came from the restaurant kitchen, the rest from the grocery.

Griffin overslept and was still there when the assistants arrived

The story says outright that if only he had woken in good time, all might have been well.

He panicked and ran, and they gave chase

Panic, not calculation, is his first reaction throughout the story.

By quickly taking off his newly found clothes

Which left him invisible and naked again in the chill January air.

Bandages, dark glasses, a false nose, side-whiskers and a large hat

The same five items that startle everybody at Iping.

He attacked the shopkeeper from behind and robbed him

The narrator calls the attack callous.

He was eager to get away from the crowds

He took a train to the village of Iping and booked two rooms at the inn.

2 and 3 only

'Without regard to expense' means without paying at all.

He took it, then attacked the shopkeeper and robbed him of all his money

Nothing in this story is ever paid for.

In a London January, being unseen and being warm are two different lives

The contradiction is the subject; the thefts are the symptoms.

Drury Lane — the disguise and the attack on the shopkeeper

The store is where he overslept; Iping and the study come later.

An invisible man tries to be warm, and commits a worse crime at every attempt

Warmth is the motive throughout; the escalation is the result.

Stolen money, a stolen face, and two rooms in a village inn

And every one of the three will be gone within a few days.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the sequence and include at least seven of: the escape from the boys; midwinter and the impossibility of going without clothes; entering the store for warmth; taking clothes after closing time (shoes, overcoat, wide-brimmed hat); the food and wine; the quilts…

A stranger at a village inn in winter was unusual, and his appearance was uncommon

It set all tongues wagging in the village.

A desire for solitude, work not to be disturbed, and an accident that had affected his face

Three sentences that answer everything a curious landlady might ask.

Griffin admitted he had no ready cash and pretended a cheque was coming

It is the lie of a man with no plan at all.

Noises in the study, and then the chink of money from the desk

They crept downstairs to listen.

Silently, with a poker firmly in his hand, and flung the door open

He shouted a challenge as the door went back.

Under the desk, behind the curtains and up the chimney as well

There was not a sign of anybody.

It stood wide open, though it was usually shut and locked

He was normally furious if anyone entered his room.

It leapt up and dashed itself into her face

The chair followed immediately afterwards.

It sprang into the air and charged at her legs foremost

It then pushed them out and slammed and locked the door.

That the stranger had put spirits into her furniture

She was especially distressed because her mother used to sit in that chair.

What he had done to her chair, and how he left an empty room and entered a locked one

The constable had already been sent for secretly.

He lost his temper and threw off his whole disguise

Anger, not detection, is what finally exposes him.

Bandages, whiskers, spectacles and even his nose — in about a minute

Everybody in the bar was suddenly looking at a man with no head.

Griffin grew more invisible as he threw off garment after garment

Finally a shirt went up into the air and Jaffers was holding nothing he could see.

2 and 3 only

The clergyman found the room apparently empty.

Jaffers was knocked unconscious, and Griffin shook himself free and escaped

There were cries of 'Hold him!' and nobody could.

Iping meets an invisible man and explains him, quite reasonably, as witchcraft

The gap between what the reader knows and what the village knows is the subject.

Mr Jaffers — tried to take into custody a man with no head on him

The constable was sent for secretly, and Mrs Hall believed in spirits.

It is an extract from a longer novel, and ends on Griffin still at large

The textbook's suggested reading points to 'The Invisible Man' for the rest.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the sequence and include at least seven of: the stir caused by the stranger; his three explanations to Mrs Hall; her tolerance and the payment in advance; the money running out and the invented cheque; the clergyman's study, the poker and the empty room; the…

The mud on his feet wore away, so the impressions grew fainter and vanished

Nothing had happened to the man; only to the mud.

He is unseen but not untouchable, so he can be held, struck and arrested

He still feels cold, still needs food, and still picks up mud.

That his lawlessness is out of all proportion to any provocation

It is the first thing we see him do, and the story never softens it.

So that we meet him as a mystery and a nuisance before we learn he is brilliant

Our first impression of him is a crime scene, not a laboratory.

The invisibility is produced by drugs and limited by physical facts

Cold, hunger and mud all continue to apply to him.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

In midwinter London, that combination is nearly unliveable.

He becomes visible again at regular intervals

Nothing in the story suggests the effect wears off on its own.

He destroys his own home, clothes and money along with the landlord's property

Revenge rarely stops where it is aimed.

Genuinely brilliant — he achieved what nobody had achieved before

The judgement to add is about his conduct, not his ability.

Ability and judgement are separate things, and his do not match

The narrator gives him the praise and the criticism in one sentence.

Clothes make him visible, so he must choose between warmth and concealment

That choice shapes everything he does for the rest of the story.

It hands the reader the solution early and shifts interest to the man himself

The story is not a whodunnit; it is about what Griffin does next.

They give the reader an outside view of the mystery before it is explained

Once the prints fade, they disappear from the story entirely.

That he answers small obstacles with disproportionate force

Everything that happens later in Iping follows the same pattern.

Attention stays on Griffin's conduct rather than on his method

The headnote asks about use and misuse, not about chemistry.

Being unseen requires being naked, and the air is bitterly cold

The next section turns entirely on that problem.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the meaning of 'lawless' as refusing to be bound by rules rather than being wicked or desperate; the eviction and the fire, with a comment on proportion; the cost of the act to Griffin himself; the fact that the phrase sits beside praise of his ability; and…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include the advantage (unseen movement, no description possible, escape from the boys) and at least three limits with evidence: solidity and vulnerability; clothes and carried objects remaining visible, so he must be naked; mud, dust or rain revealing him; ongoing n…

His invisibility — dressed, he was a visible person again

Warm for the first time, and instantly identifiable.

It puts him back exactly where he began, minus a night's sleep

Naked, cold and unseen — the loop he cannot get out of.

He hoped for clothes and something to fill the gap where his head should be

A coat with nothing above it is not a man.

He had an easy alternative — he could have undressed and slipped out

Violence was merely quicker than the alternative.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Arson, then theft, then assault and robbery.

He took whatever he liked, since nothing was being paid for

The joke is in the polite phrasing of a burglary.

A crowd hides a stranger; a village studies one

The arrival of such a stranger at an inn in winter sets every tongue wagging.

He is not planning a life so much as solving the next few hours

He eats, drinks and sleeps, and makes no arrangement for the morning.

Being warm makes him visible and being unseen makes him freeze

Every escape returns him to the beginning of the same problem.

It is the narrator's judgement, and the hardest word in the story

Elsewhere the narrator simply reports what he does.

Asking anyone for help or explaining his situation

Every problem in his life is solved by taking.

To show that his needs are entirely ordinary, however extraordinary he is

Cold meat, coffee, sweets, wine and a bed — an invisible man's idea of freedom.

The fantastic premise is anchored in a city the reader can believe in

Science fiction works by keeping everything except one impossibility ordinary.

A man in bandages, dark glasses and a false nose attracts every eye in a village

A stranger of such uncommon appearance sets all tongues wagging.

For all his brilliance he acts on impulse when surprised

He runs first, and only then remembers that undressing would save him.

He must choose between being warm and being unseen at every moment

He does travel, and he does carry things — but only as a visible man.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the necessity of nakedness against a bitterly cold midwinter; the store episode showing that comfort and concealment cannot coexist; the escape achieved only by surrendering everything gained; the absence of any option but running and stripping; the moral c…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the genuine achievement (repeated experiments, a result nobody had reached, the narrator's 'brilliant'); the recklessness of experimenting on himself with an irreversible change; the failure to test the practical limits (clothes, food, mud, cold); the absen…

She took him for an eccentric scientist, and he had paid her in advance

The money is doing as much work as the explanation.

Cold bedclothes, and the clothes and bandages he always wore lying about

Every clue is present, and nobody can read it.

An invisible man was losing his temper with people in his room

The reader knows; the Halls do not.

He suddenly produced ready cash after admitting he had none

That is arithmetic, not superstition.

A warrant orders an arrest, so the man must be arrested with or without a head

He was not so easily put off his job.

A is true, but R is false

No warning of any kind reaches them; that is why they fall back on witchcraft. The assertion stands, the reason is false.

It turns vague suspicion into an open hunt for a known invisible man

Two awkward questions could have been ignored; instead he answered them with a demonstration.

We know the explanation while the characters do not, which creates the comedy

Wells gave us the science in the second paragraph of the story.

Brilliant in achievement, reckless as an experimenter, and irresponsible in use

He tested the result on himself, irreversibly, and then used it for theft.

Tested the conditions and the reversal before taking the dose himself

Clothes, food, mud and cold were all discoverable in advance.

Nothing at all — no home, no money, no disguise and no hiding place

He is free, and worse off than at any point in the story.

The discovery has been misused at every single opportunity

Arson, theft, burglary, assault and the injury of a policeman.

Ordinary furniture becomes terrifying, and the comedy and the fear arrive together

A hat in the face and a chair charging legs-first are funny and frightening at once.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the genuine achievement and the narrator's 'brilliant'; the recklessness of an irreversible self-experiment; the failure to anticipate the practical conditions (clothes, cold, mud, food); the complete absence of further scientific work; the misuse of the di…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Accept either conclusion if argued from the text. Content should include: at least two advantages drawn from the story; and at least three disadvantages with evidence — the necessity of nakedness against cold, continued solidity and vulnerability, betrayal by mud or sound, the imp…