CBSE Class 10 English — Sample Paper (Solved)
A full CBSE-pattern Literature sample paper — extract-based, short-answer, and long-answer questions across First Flight and Footprints Without Feet — with complete model answers written to match what examiners actually expect. Free.
Section A — Extract-Based Questions
Read each extract carefully, then answer the questions that follow.
First Flight — "Fire and Ice" (Robert Frost)
"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire."
Identify the rhyme scheme of these opening lines. [1 mark]
ABAB — "fire" (line 1) rhymes with "desire" (line 3), and "ice" (line 2) sets up the rhyme completed later in the poem.
What do "fire" and "ice" symbolise in the poem? [2 marks]
"Fire" symbolises destructive human desire and passion, while "ice" symbolises hatred and cold indifference. Frost uses both as equally capable of ending the world, framing them as two faces of human destructiveness rather than opposites.
Why does the poet say he holds "with those who favor fire"? [2 marks]
The poet has personally experienced the destructive intensity of desire, so he believes fire — representing overwhelming passion and greed — is the more immediate threat to the world, based on what he has "tasted" in his own life.
Footprints Without Feet — "A Question of Trust" (Ruskin Bond)
Horace Danby was, at fifty, an expert safe-breaker. He was also an expert in old, rare books, and it was his harmless passion for book collecting that had brought about his one crime a year.
What contradiction is set up in this opening line about Horace Danby? [2 marks]
Horace Danby is introduced as both a criminal (an expert safe-breaker) and a refined, harmless collector (an expert in rare books), immediately establishing him as an unusual, non-violent thief whose only motive is his love of books, not greed.
Why did Danby commit "one crime a year"? [2 marks]
Danby stole once a year purely to fund his passion for collecting rare and valuable old books, which he could not otherwise afford — his crime was driven by a hobby, not by financial desperation or habitual criminality.
Section B — Short Answer Questions
Answer each in about 40 words.
1. How does the poet personify the tiger's captivity in "A Tiger in the Zoo"?
The poet contrasts the tiger's natural grace and power — "pacing in his stripes," "velvet paws" — with the humiliation of captivity, where he lies "still in his corner" and stares "at brilliant stars." The cage strips him of the freedom his body is built for, symbolising the cruelty of keeping wild creatures confined.
2. What lesson does the sermon at Benares teach through the story of the mustard seed?
The Buddha sends the grieving Kisa Gotami to find a mustard seed from a house death has never visited. Unable to find one, she realises death is universal and no household is exempt, which teaches her — and the reader — to accept mortality rather than resist it with denial or despair.
3. Why does the narrator in "Two Stories About Flying" call the seagull's first flight an act of both fear and triumph?
The young seagull is terrified to fly, held back by hunger and fear of failure, yet the moment his father withholds food, instinct forces him off the ledge. His fall becomes flight, turning paralysing fear into an unexpected, triumphant success driven purely by necessity.
4. What does Franz's changed attitude towards M. Hamel reveal in "The Last Lesson"?
Franz, who once resented school and M. Hamel's strictness, suddenly feels deep affection and respect once he learns this is the last French lesson. His shift shows how the imminent loss of something familiar — language, teacher, routine — awakens a value for it that indifference had hidden.
Section C — Long Answer Question
Answer in about 100–120 words.
"Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom" argues that freedom is a chain of interconnected responsibilities, not a single achievement. Explain this idea with reference to the chapter, in about 100–120 words.
Mandela describes freedom as a series of hills, each revealing another hill still to climb — first the limited freedom of childhood, then freedom to marry and earn a living, and finally the larger freedom of his people from oppression. He argues that true freedom is inseparable from responsibility: the oppressor is as unfree as the oppressed, since hatred and prejudice cage the oppressor's own humanity. Freeing others, then, is also an act of freeing oneself. This chain-like structure — personal freedom leading to communal freedom leading to moral freedom for all — is why Mandela frames his walk as endless: each freedom won only exposes a larger responsibility still owed.
Tip
Use your browser's Print → Save as PDF to keep an offline copy of this paper for revision.