A Letter to God — study notes

Read the story itself in your textbook, First Flight (NCERT). This lesson is SOYL's explanation and analysis; it does not reproduce the text.

A Letter to God is a short story by G. L. Fuentes (Gregorio López y Fuentes, 1897–1966), a Mexican novelist, poet and journalist who wrote about rural Mexico and its farming and indigenous communities; his best-known novel is El Indio (1935). The story was written in Spanish and is read in English translation. It is set in a farming valley; the currency, pesos, places it in rural Mexico.

Hope and ruin. Lencho's family farm a valley and depend entirely on their harvest. The maize is ripe and needs only one good rain. When it rains, Lencho is overjoyed and pictures the drops as money, but a storm of hail lasting about an hour destroys the crop, and the family fears a year of hunger.

Faith. The family still trusts that God will help. Lencho, who can write, asks God for a hundred pesos to replant and feed his family until the next harvest, addresses the envelope to God and posts it.

Kindness. At the post office, the postman and the postmaster first laugh; the postmaster then grows serious, moved by the farmer's faith. To protect that faith he replies, collecting money from his staff and friends and from his own salary. He raises seventy pesos and signs the note God.

Irony. Lencho is not surprised to receive money, but is angry that thirty pesos are missing. He writes again asking God for the rest and not to send it by post, because he suspects the post office staff.

• Faith: total, simple faith gives Lencho strength and inspires the postmaster, but also blinds him to human goodness.
• Irony: the helpers are accused of theft (situational); the reader knows what Lencho does not (dramatic).
• Human kindness: strangers give quietly, seeking no credit.
• Nature as giver and destroyer: rain brings joy, hail brings ruin.
• Poverty and dependence: one lost crop means a year of hunger.
• Gratitude and suspicion: Lencho cannot see the kindness around him.

Message: faith in God and trust in people should go together; kindness is often unrecognised, yet worth doing.

Lencho: a hard-working, experienced farmer; optimistic; deeply and simply faithful; practical in his request; but naive and suspicious, so that he unknowingly wrongs his helpers.

The postmaster: good-humoured, then sensitive and respectful of faith; generous (gives his own salary); resourceful (organises the collection); humble (signs as God). He is often seen as the real hero.

Others: Lencho's wife and children share the family's hope for rain and its grief after the storm; the postman finds the letter amusing and hands over the reply.

• Third-person narrator, moving between Lencho's home and the post office, so the reader knows more than Lencho.
• Comparisons: raindrops pictured as coins, hailstones as pearls.
• Contrast and reversal: joy → ruin; kindness → accusation.
• Irony at the end, left without comment, so the reader judges.
• Plain, simple style suited to a simple, sincere hero; gentle humour (the address To God).

SOYL practice sentences for comparisons (not from the story): The fireflies were tiny lanterns over the paddy (metaphor); Her laugh rang out like a temple bell (simile).

Single words from the story, with meanings. Learn the words; describe the sentences they appear in in your own words.

Extract-based (5 marks): the board prints a passage from the story; SOYL practice uses commentary passages instead. Answer from the passage, then from your knowledge of the story.

Short answers (3 marks, 40–50 words): point + incident + explanation.

Long answers (6 marks, 100–120 words): a clear stand; three points with incidents in your own words; a link to a theme or the irony; a one-line conclusion. Extrapolation tasks (diary of the postmaster, Lencho's letter after learning the truth) must stay consistent with the characters.

Practise with the real textbook passages from First Flight.