Footprints without Feet: Class 10 English · Chapter 5

5.1 Before you read

Suppose you swallowed a pill tonight and woke up tomorrow completely invisible (अदृश्य). Nobody at the bus stop, in class or at home could see you. For an hour it might feel like a superpower. You could walk in late past the school gate, hear what your friends say about you, or stroll into a cricket match without a ticket. Then the problems start. How would you eat in front of people, flag down an auto, or convince your family that you are standing right beside them?

This story is about a man who really does it. Griffin, a gifted scientist, finds a way to make his own body invisible. Wells is less interested in the chemistry than in the man: what does he do with a power that lets him slip past every eye? The story is science fiction (विज्ञान कथा). It takes one scientific idea that is not possible today and then follows its effects as if it were real. Read it as a thriller, and as a test of character.

5.2 Reading the story

The story falls into two halves, and your textbook marks each with a Read and Find Out box. The first half is set in London in deep winter. It explains how Griffin came to be roaming the streets unseen and how he survives there. The second half moves to Iping, a quiet English village, where a strange lodger at the inn sets off a chain of baffling events. Fig. 5.2 traces his route.

One more thing is worth knowing. Wells's full novel opens at Iping and lets Griffin explain his London past much later. The textbook's retelling puts the events in time order, so you learn the scientist's secret on the very first page.

5.2.1 Part I: Invisible in London

Wells opens with a riddle. Two London boys notice wet, muddy prints of bare feet on a doorstep, with no one in sight. While they watch, a new print appears beside the last one, and then more, as if an empty pair of feet were walking off. They follow the trail, but the mud on the walker's soles soon runs out and the trail is lost.

Only then does the narrator let us in on the secret. The walker is Griffin, a scientist whose experiments aimed to make a living body invisible. The final step was to swallow a mixture of rare drugs, and it worked. Light now passes through him as it would through a clean window pane. Yet he is still flesh and bone: he can be touched, he gets hungry and he feels the cold.

The reason he is barefoot on a winter street tells us a lot about him. Griffin set the house where he lodged alight, to get back at a landlord who wanted him out. Only his body was invisible, not his clothes, so to escape unseen he had to leave them behind. In one night he lost his room, his money and everything he wore.

London in mid-winter is no place to be without clothes, so Griffin goes looking for warmth. He hides inside a large department store until the doors are locked for the night. Then he has the place to himself: warm clothes from the shelves, a meal from the restaurant and food counters, and a bed made from a heap of quilts. There is one catch he cannot avoid. Dressed, he can be seen again.

In the morning he sleeps too long. Two early assistants walk his way; he bolts, and the chase is on. To get away he must strip off everything he has just put on, so he ends up exactly where he started: unseen, and shivering in the January cold.

This time he wants more than clothes: he needs a face. Drury Lane, the heart of London's theatre district, has shops that supply costumes for plays, and he enters one unseen. Upstairs he puts together a disguise: a big hat, dark glasses, a false nose, side-whiskers and bandages wound round his head. On his way out he strikes the owner from behind, without a second thought, and robs him.

5.2.2 Part II: The stranger at the Iping inn

Griffin next heads for the countryside. In the village of Iping he takes two rooms at the inn, hoping for peace far from the crowds. He gets the opposite. In a small village in the dead of winter, a guest wrapped in bandages, with dark glasses and huge whiskers, is the most interesting thing anyone has seen in months. The innkeeper's wife, Mrs Hall, hopes for a chat and gets a short speech instead: he has come to work in peace, wants no interruptions, and keeps his face covered because of an accident.

Two things keep Mrs Hall patient. She has made up her mind that her lodger is just an eccentric (सनकी) scientist, clever and odd, the sort who snaps at people. And he paid for his rooms before moving in. The second reason does not last: Griffin's stolen money runs out, and he invents a cheque that is supposedly on its way.

The first strange event happens at the clergyman's house, before sunrise. Noises downstairs wake him and his wife, and outside the study they hear coins clinking at his desk. He bursts in with a poker, ready to catch a thief, and finds an empty room. Searching every corner, even the chimney, turns up nobody, yet the household money has gone. The puzzled clergyman can talk of nothing else all day.

Later that morning it is the Halls' turn. Their guest guards his room fiercely, so when they find his door open and the room apparently empty, curiosity wins and they step inside. What they see makes no sense: a cold bed, and the very clothes and bandages he is never seen without, lying around the room. If his clothes are here, where is he? The answer comes as a sniff, close to Mrs Hall's ear.

Then the furniture turns on them. Her lodger's hat hurls itself at her face, a chair rushes at the pair and shoves them out of the room, and the door bangs shut and locks. To the Halls it looks like magic. We, who know the secret, can picture Griffin swinging the chair.

Shaken, Mrs Hall decides the room is haunted and blames her lodger for setting spirits loose in her furniture. Being attacked by her late mother's chair feels like a betrayal. The village talks of witchcraft. Yet when people hear about the clergyman's empty desk, they also notice something more down-to-earth: the guest who said he was broke now has cash in hand. Word is sent, quietly, to the constable.

Mrs Hall does not wait for the law. She marches up to her guest, now dressed and bandaged again, and demands answers. What has he done to her chair? How does he come and go through locked doors? Griffin, short-tempered at the best of times, explodes and offers to show her exactly what he is. Off come the bandages, the whiskers, the glasses and finally the nose itself. The customers in the bar, frozen with horror, see clothes standing up with nothing above the collar.

Mr Jaffers, the constable, is surprised to be arresting a headless man, but duty is duty: the magistrate's warrant names this person, and it says nothing about heads. The arrest becomes a wrestling match with a man who is disappearing in stages. Each piece of clothing Griffin tears off leaves less of him to grab, and soon Jaffers is grappling with empty air. Anyone who joins in gets punched by an invisible fist. Jaffers is knocked out cold. Amid shouts of “Hold him!”, Griffin wriggles loose and is gone, and nobody can tell which way.

5.3 Thinking about the text

Your textbook's Think about it questions ask you to judge Griffin in two roles: as a person living among others, and as a scientist. Board answers on this story are marked on evidence. Every time you name a quality, point to something he does.

5.3.1 A lawless man

Being lawless means acting as if laws, and other people's rights, do not apply to you. Griffin fits that description from the first page to the last. Notice that his offences grow worse as the story goes on, and that each one is a choice. Cold and hunger explain why he needed clothes and food. They do not explain the fire, the attack on the shopkeeper or the stolen housekeeping money.

Is there anything to pity in him? A little. He is cold, hungry and hunted, and he is alone, because he can trust no one with his secret. But hardship never makes him stop and think. Each problem is solved with a new offence, so the story traces a slide downwards, shown in Fig. 5.3. That is why calling him lawless is fair.

5.3.2 Griffin as a scientist

As a scientist, Griffin deserves real credit. He set out to prove something that everyone thought impossible and kept at it through a long series of experiments. He was bold enough to test the final step on his own body. In the world of the story, he achieved what nobody else had.

But science is more than cleverness. Griffin never seems to ask what his discovery is for. He does not share it or use it to help anyone. He did not plan how he would live afterwards, where he would eat, sleep or keep warm, and nothing in the story suggests he can undo the change. Worst of all, he turns his discovery into a tool for crime. A good scientist joins knowledge with ethics (नैतिकता), a sense of right and wrong about how that knowledge is used. Griffin has plenty of the first and none of the second.

So how should we judge him? A great mind, a poor scientist and a dangerous man. The story warns that knowledge without responsibility harms others, and in the end harms the knower too. By the close of the extract Griffin is alone, wanted by the law and, once again, freezing.

5.3.3 The people of Iping

Wells surrounds Griffin with ordinary people, and their reactions give the story much of its fun. Use this table to plan a short character sketch of any of them.

Mrs Hall deserves a closer look, because board papers often ask about her. She is a businesswoman first: a guest who pays in advance can be forgiven a lot. She is curious enough to slip into a forbidden room and frightened enough to think of ghosts. Yet while the village whispers, she is the one who walks up to the stranger and asks him straight out what is going on. Her boldness forces the truth into the open.

5.3.4 Themes, craft and title

A theme (विषय-वस्तु) is a big idea that a story makes you think about. This story has several.

• Science and responsibility. A discovery is only as good as the person using it. Griffin's power harms others and makes him miserable too.
• Power without checks. No one can see Griffin, so no one can stop him, and with each escape he grows more ruthless.
• Crime does not pay. Every offence solves today's problem and creates tomorrow's. He is always cold, always running, never at peace.
• Isolation. Griffin came to Iping to be alone, but his secret cuts him off from everyone. He has no friend and no home.
• Appearance and reality. People judge by what they see: bandages, whiskers, a chair that moves. The truth is hidden in plain sight.

How Wells tells it. The story opens with suspense (कौतूहल): a puzzle with no answer, prints with no feet. Within a few lines the narrator explains everything to us. From then on we know more than the people in the story, and that gap is called dramatic irony. It changes how we read the Iping scenes: the clergyman checking the chimney, Mrs Hall fleeing a “haunted” chair, Jaffers ready to arrest a man “with or without his head”. They are baffled; we are amused, and also a little afraid of what Griffin will do next. Fig. 5.4 shows the gap opening and closing.

The title. Footprints without Feet is a paradox: marks left by someone who cannot be seen. It also works as a symbol. Griffin can hide his body, but not the traces of what he does: mud on the pavement, an empty desk, sudden cash, a constable knocked out cold. Even an invisible man leaves evidence.

Notice, too, that people only ever see Griffin through things that are not part of him: mud, stolen clothes, a theatre disguise. Fig. 5.5 tracks how much of him the world can see. Whenever he can be seen he can be caught, and whenever he cannot be seen he is cold and alone.

5.4 Talk about it: the science behind the story

The Talk about it questions step outside the story into real science, and they link neatly with what you study about light in Class 10 Science. Discuss them in pairs or groups first. The notes below give you facts to argue with.

5.4.1 Invisible for a day: yes or no?

Most people say yes at first and then change their minds. The story itself is the best list of disadvantages: Griffin is cold, hungry, homeless and alone, and he can only be seen, or trusted, in disguise. Weigh both sides before you decide.

5.4.2 Forces and things we cannot see

Griffin is not the only invisible thing around you. You cannot see the magnetism that turns a compass needle, the gravity that pulls a mango to the ground, or the air that fills a balloon. Atoms and most microbes are far too small for the naked eye. Our eyes also pick up only a narrow band of light, so ultraviolet, infrared, radio waves and X-rays pass by unseen.

We know these things are real for the same reason the boys knew someone was on the steps: we see their effects. Iron filings line up around a magnet, a pinwheel spins in the wind, a microscope shows bacteria, and ultraviolet light makes special ink glow. Fig. 5.6 shows these four clues.

What if you could see them all? The air would be thick with Wi-Fi and mobile signals, field lines would loop around every fridge magnet, and you would spot germs on your hands before lunch. Doctors and engineers might love it, but most of us would find the world exhausting. In a way, our limited senses act as a filter that keeps everyday life simple.

5.4.3 Transparent, translucent, opaque

When light meets a material, three things can happen. It can be absorbed, that is, soaked up and turned into heat. It can be reflected or scattered, bounced off in one or many directions. Or it can be transmitted, allowed through. A material that blocks light, like wood or a brick wall, is opaque. One that lets light through but scatters it, like frosted glass or butter paper, is translucent: you see brightness but no clear shapes.

Why do glass and water behave like this? There are two reasons. First, the particles that make up glass and water do not absorb the energy of visible light, so the light is not soaked up. Second, those particles are spread evenly, with no grains or gaps large enough to scatter light, so it travels straight on. Wood fails both tests.

Yet you can still see a glass of water. Light changes speed as it passes from air into glass or water, so it bends at the surface. This bending is called refraction (अपवर्तन). A little light is also reflected at each surface, which is why a window shows faint reflections. How strongly a material bends light is measured by its refractive index: about 1.0 for air, 1.33 for water and about 1.5 for glass. The bigger the difference from the surroundings, the easier an object is to see. Fig. 5.7 compares the four cases.

5.4.4 Science or fiction?

To be truly invisible, a body would need two things at once: to absorb no light at all, and to bend light exactly as much as air does. Real bodies fail on both counts. Blood looks red because it absorbs some colours of light, and bones and muscles scatter it. Some creatures come close. Many jellyfish, and the glass frogs of Central and South American forests, are partly see-through, but you can still spot them.

There is a deeper problem that invisibility stories rarely mention. To see, your eyes must absorb light, because the retina at the back of the eye works by catching it. A perfectly transparent eye would let all the light pass straight through. So a truly invisible person would be blind.

Scientists have tried a different route: instead of making an object clear, guide light around it. In 2006 a team of scientists in the United States and Britain built a small cloak from specially designed materials, called metamaterials, that steered microwaves around an object. Hiding something as large as a person, from every direction and in ordinary daylight, remains far beyond today's technology.

So is the story pointless? Not at all, because science fiction often runs ahead of science. In his 1914 novel The World Set Free, Wells himself imagined “atomic bombs” decades before any were built. In 1945 the writer Arthur C. Clarke suggested placing communication satellites so high that they keep pace with the Earth's spin. Today such satellites carry television and weather pictures across India.

5.5 Board exam practice

CBSE papers test the supplementary reader with short answers of about 40–50 words and long answers of about 100–120 words, and some practice papers use extracts. Answer from the story in your textbook, not from films or the full novel. Fig. 5.8 shows a reliable shape for a long answer.