Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 8 — Going Places (A. R. Barton)
Welcome to HSLC Guru’s complete study guide for Class 12 English Flamingo Prose Chapter 8 — “Going Places” by A. R. Barton, prescribed by the Assam State School Education Board (ASSEB) for HS 2nd Year students. A. R. Barton is a contemporary English writer who lives in Zurich and writes in English. The story “Going Places” is a sensitive psychological portrait of Sophie, a working-class teenage girl who escapes the drab realities of her life by retreating into elaborate, romantic daydreams — of owning a boutique, becoming an actress or a fashion designer, and most of all, of a private, secret encounter with the rising Irish football star Danny Casey. The story moves gently between the steamy kitchen of Sophie’s home, the muddy United football ground, the towpath beside the canal, and the wide blue spaces of her imagination. It explores the gap between fantasy and reality, the pain of class-bound dreams, and the universal adolescent longing to “go places” — to be somewhere, and someone, more glamorous than one’s circumstances allow. This article offers the complete NCERT textbook solutions, summary in English and Assamese (সাৰাংশ), additional short and long questions, MCQs, extract-based questions, character sketches, and theme analysis — everything an ASSEB Class 12 student needs to master the chapter.
About the Author
A. R. Barton is a modern British writer who lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. He writes short fiction in English and is best known to Indian school readers through this NCERT story. His writing is marked by a delicate, suggestive style — he prefers hint and atmosphere to direct statement, and his stories often turn on the inner lives of ordinary people, especially the dreams and disappointments of the young. “Going Places” is a fine example of this method: very little “happens” outwardly, yet a whole emotional landscape opens up inside the heroine’s head. Barton’s restrained narration leaves it to the reader to decide how much of Sophie’s story is real and how much is wishful invention.
Summary
“Going Places” is the story of a teenage girl named Sophie who lives in a poor, working-class English neighbourhood with her father, mother, elder brother Geoff and younger brother Derek. The family lives in a small, steamy house; the kitchen is cramped, dirty laundry is piled up, and the father, a coarse and tired labourer, sits in his vest in front of the television. Sophie is in her last year of school. Her practical friend Jansie already knows that they are both “earmarked for the biscuit factory” — that is the future their class allows them. But Sophie refuses to accept this future. She is a passionate dreamer.
As the two girls walk home from school, Sophie tells Jansie that she is going to open a boutique — the most exclusive boutique the city has ever seen. Jansie reminds her that they will have nothing like the money needed and warns her not to say such things in front of her father, who would be furious. Undeterred, Sophie privately also imagines herself as an actress (“there’s real money in that”) who will run the boutique on the side, or perhaps as a fashion designer or a manager. She tells Jansie that for one woman to manage a boutique is “not impossible”.
At home, Sophie’s announcements are quickly punctured. Her father snorts and her elder brother Geoff laughs softly. The little brother Derek asks why she would even want to do that. Her father grumbles that the only place she will land in is “the biscuit factory”. Sophie watches her tired mother carrying a pile of clothes and feels a tightening in her throat — a rare moment of seeing her family’s life as it really is.
Sophie loves her elder brother Geoff more than anyone else. Geoff is a young apprentice mechanic, almost grown-up, who travels every day across the city to work. He is silent, withdrawn, and slow to share his thoughts — “words had to be prized out of him like stones out of the ground”. This very silence fascinates Sophie. She imagines that Geoff knows another, larger world — areas of the city she has never seen, people she has never met, glamorous lives behind closed doors. She longs for him to take her with him, to be admitted into his secret world.
It is to Geoff alone that Sophie confides her great secret: she has met Danny Casey, the brilliant young Irish football star whom the whole family worships. She tells Geoff she met him on the pavement outside Royce’s, that he was very polite, that he signed an autograph for her on a scrap of paper which she promptly lost, and that he has agreed to meet her again next week. Geoff is at first incredulous, then thoughtful, then concerned. He reminds her that thousands of girls would fall for Casey and that she should not get involved with him. Yet, almost in spite of himself, he tells their father, who reacts with angry disbelief and threatens, jokingly but heavily, to “knock her bloody head off” if she has been telling lies.
The whole family is mad about football, and Casey is their hero. Sophie’s father and Geoff make their weekly “pilgrimage” to watch United play. The previous Saturday, Casey had scored a beautiful goal — slipping like a ghost past the lumbering defenders — and Sophie had been there with her father and brothers, glowing with the secret pride that this golden boy was, in her imagination, hers.
The day of the supposed second meeting arrives. Sophie slips away from home and goes alone to the lonely towpath beside the canal, the place she has fixed in her mind for the rendezvous. She sits on the wooden bench under an elm tree and waits. The light fades. The city grows quiet. She watches the dark water and the distant lamps come on. People pass — a man with a dog, an old man — but no Danny Casey. She becomes restless, then anxious, then bitterly disappointed. She thinks of Geoff’s warning, of her father’s anger, of Jansie’s sharp tongue if she ever found out. Slowly, the truth she has refused to face begins to settle on her: he is not coming, he was never coming, perhaps he never even knew she existed.
Yet even as she trudges home in the dusk, her imagination begins to repair itself. She pictures herself walking into Royce’s, sees the door open, sees the slim, dark, gentle figure of Casey waiting for her with a sad smile, and the dream begins all over again. The story closes on this delicate, painful note — the reader is left to understand that the entire encounter, autograph and all, has almost certainly been a fantasy spun out of Sophie’s lonely, hungry heart. The “going places” of the title is bitterly ironic: Sophie goes nowhere except into her own mind. Her real future, like Jansie’s, points quietly toward the biscuit factory.
সাৰাংশ (Assamese Summary)
“গোইং প্লেচেছ” এ. আৰ. বাৰটনে লিখা এটি মনস্তাত্ত্বিক চুটিগল্প য’ত এজনী কিশোৰীৰ কল্পনা আৰু বাস্তৱৰ মাজৰ ব্যৱধান অতি কোমলভাৱে বিচাৰ কৰা হৈছে। গল্পৰ কেন্দ্ৰীয় চৰিত্ৰ চফি এজনী ইংলেণ্ডৰ দৰিদ্ৰ শ্ৰমিক পৰিয়ালৰ স্কুলীয়া ছোৱালী। তাইৰ পিতৃ এজন ক্লান্ত, কঠোৰ মানুহ; মাতৃ ঘৰৰ বোজাৰ তলত পিষ্ট; ডাঙৰ ককায়েক জেফ এজন কম-কথা কোৱা মেকানিক শিকাৰু আৰু সৰু ভাই ডেৰেক। তাইৰ ঘনিষ্ঠ বান্ধৱী জেঞ্চি বাস্তৱবাদী — তাই জানে দুয়োজনীৰে ভৱিষ্যত হৈছে বিস্কুট কাৰখানাত কাম কৰা।
কিন্তু চফি দিনে-নিশাই সপোন দেখে। তাই কয় যে তাই এদিন এখন বিলাসী বুটিক খুলিব, অভিনেত্ৰী হ’ব, ফেছন ডিজাইনাৰ হ’ব। ঘৰৰ লোকসকলে তাইৰ এই কথাবোৰ লৈ হাঁহে আৰু পিতৃয়ে ক্ষুব্ধ হয়। চফিয়ে তাইৰ একমাত্ৰ বিশ্বাসী ককায়েক জেফক এটি গোপন কথা কয় — তাই নাকি প্ৰখ্যাত আইৰিছ ফুটবল খেলুৱৈ ডেনি কেচীৰ লগত ৰয়েছৰ সন্মুখত হঠাতে দেখা পাইছিল, তেওঁ তাইক অটোগ্ৰাফ দিছিল আৰু পিছ সপ্তাহত পুনৰ লগ ধৰিবলৈ ৰাজী হৈছে। জেফে আচৰিত হৈ পিতৃক কথাটো কয়, পিতৃয়ে অবিশ্বাস কৰি ক্ৰোধ প্ৰকাশ কৰে। কেচী হৈছে পৰিয়ালৰ সকলোৰে নায়ক — পিতৃ আৰু জেফে প্ৰতি সপ্তাহে ইউনাইটেডৰ খেল চাবলৈ যায়।
নিৰ্ধাৰিত দিনত চফি গোপনে কেনেলৰ পাৰৰ এৰাবৰাব পথত গৈ এটা কাঠৰ বেঞ্চত বহি দীৰ্ঘ সময় অপেক্ষা কৰে। সন্ধিয়া হয়, পোহৰ মান পৰে, কিন্তু কেচী নাহে। লাহে লাহে চফিয়ে বুজি পায় যে এই সাক্ষাত আচলতে কেতিয়াও নহ’ব — গোটেই কথাটো তাইৰ কল্পনাৰ ফচল আছিল। তথাপি ঘৰলৈ উভতি যাওঁতে তাই আকৌ কল্পনা কৰিবলৈ আৰম্ভ কৰে যে কেচী ৰয়েছত তাইক বাট চাই আছে। গল্পটো এই কোমল, বেদনাদায়ক ইংগিতেৰে শেষ হয় — চফিৰ “ক’ৰবালৈ যোৱা” মানে আচলতে নিজৰ মনৰ ভিতৰলৈ যোৱা; বাস্তৱৰ ভৱিষ্যত হৈছে সেই বিস্কুট কাৰখানা।
Understanding the Text
1. Sophie and Jansie were classmates and friends. What were the differences between them that show up in the story?
Answer: Sophie and Jansie are close school friends but they are temperamentally opposite. Sophie is a romantic dreamer who refuses to accept the limits of her working-class background; she fantasises about owning a boutique, becoming an actress, or working as a fashion manager. Jansie, by contrast, is “nosey” but practical and clear-eyed. She knows that the two of them are “earmarked for the biscuit factory” and tries to bring Sophie back to reality. Sophie hides her secrets even from Jansie, fearing she will gossip; Jansie keeps her dreams modest because she sees no use in dreaming what cannot come true. Sophie lives in the future of her imagination; Jansie lives in the hard present.
2. How would you describe the character and temperament of Sophie’s father?
Answer: Sophie’s father is a tired, coarse, hard-working labouring man with little patience for his daughter’s dreams. He is short-tempered, rough in speech, and quick to dismiss anything that does not match his own idea of a sensible working-class life. He sits at home in his vest in front of the television, drinks his beer, and growls his answers. His ambitions are limited to football and the local pub. He warns Sophie that she will end up in the biscuit factory and threatens, half in anger and half in mockery, to “knock her bloody head off” if she has been lying about Danny Casey. Yet he is not cruel — he is simply worn out by hard work and unable to imagine a life different from his own.
3. Why did Sophie like her brother Geoff more than any other person? From her perspective, what did he symbolise?
Answer: Sophie liked Geoff most because he was almost a grown man, silent, mysterious, and connected with a world outside their narrow home. He travelled daily across the city to his workshop and brought back the impression of distant streets and unknown people. Words had to be “prized out of him like stones out of the ground”, and his very silence convinced Sophie that he was a keeper of secrets. To her he symbolised freedom, mystery, and possibility — the wider world she longed to enter. She wished he would one day take her with him into those unknown places, into the glamorous, secret life that she imagined surrounded him.
4. What socio-economic background did Sophie belong to? What are the indications in the story that point to her family’s financial status?
Answer: Sophie belonged to a poor, working-class English family. Several details in the story make this plain: the small, “tiny” house with a steamy, crowded kitchen; the sink full of dirty dishes; piles of unwashed laundry; the father coming home grimy from work and sitting in his vest; the mother bent under household drudgery; the family’s “weekly pilgrimage” to the football match as their main entertainment; and Jansie’s blunt acknowledgement that they are both destined for the biscuit factory. The father’s irritated retort about money not “growing on trees” and his ridicule of Sophie’s plan to open a boutique further confirm that the family lives on the edge of want.
Talking about the Text
1. Sophie’s dreams and disappointments are all in her mind.
Answer: This is the central truth of the story. Sophie’s life never actually changes — she does not open a boutique, she does not become an actress, she does not really meet Danny Casey, she does not even leave her own neighbourhood. Every glamorous event of the story takes place inside her head. The dream of the boutique, the meeting outside Royce’s, the autograph on a slip of paper “lost”, the second meeting on the canal towpath — all of these are imaginative constructions. Even her disappointment is imagined, because the meeting that “fails” was never going to happen. The author A. R. Barton makes us see that Sophie’s emotional storms are real, but their causes are not. Her hopes and her hurts both belong to her inner life, and the outside world neither knows nor cares about them. This is what gives the story its quiet sadness — Sophie is fully alive only in fantasy.
2. It is natural for teenagers to have unrealistic dreams. What would you say are the benefits and disadvantages of such fantasising?
Answer: Dreaming is a natural and even necessary part of growing up. Its benefits are real: dreams give a young person hope, a sense of possibility, and a private space of dignity when life outside is mean or boring. They feed ambition, encourage courage, and sometimes turn into the first sketches of an actual future career. For a child like Sophie, fantasy is also a refuge from her cramped house and her father’s contempt. The disadvantages, however, can be heavy. Fantasies that ignore reality lead to bitter disappointment; they can replace real planning with idle wishing; they can isolate the dreamer from honest friends like Jansie; and, when they involve famous strangers like Danny Casey, they can blur the line between imagination and lying. The healthiest balance is the one Jansie hints at — keep dreaming, but anchor at least one foot in the world as it is, and turn dreams into goals you can actually work toward.
3. “Sophie did not want Jansie to know about her meeting with Danny Casey but later told her brother Geoff.” What were her reasons?
Answer: Sophie kept the “meeting” secret from Jansie because Jansie was “nosey” — she would tell everyone in the neighbourhood, including her parents, and it would soon reach Sophie’s father, who would be furious. Sophie also knew Jansie was sharply realistic and would either disbelieve her outright or mock her. With Geoff it was different. Geoff was almost a grown-up, he kept his mouth shut, and Sophie believed he understood her secret longings. She trusted his silence. To her, telling Geoff was almost like saying it to herself in another voice — and Geoff’s mysterious wider world made him, in her imagination, the right confidant for a glamorous secret.
Working with Words — Figurative Expressions
| Expression | Meaning / Explanation |
|---|---|
| “Words had to be prized out of him like stones out of the ground” | Geoff was extremely reserved; getting him to speak required as much effort as digging stones out of hard earth. |
| “Sophie felt a tightening in her throat” | She was overcome with a sudden, painful emotion — a mixture of love, pity and helplessness — when she saw her tired mother. |
| “If he keeps his head on his shoulders” | If Danny Casey stays sensible and is not spoiled by fame and flattery. |
| “They made their weekly pilgrimage to the United” | Watching the United football match each week was, for the family, like a religious journey to a holy place — a sacred ritual. |
| “Ghost past the lumbering defenders” | Casey moved so swiftly and lightly that he slipped past the slow, heavy defenders as silently as a ghost. |
| “Earmarked for the biscuit factory” | Already destined or set apart — by class and circumstance — for unskilled work in the local biscuit factory. |
| “Money doesn’t grow on trees” | Money is hard-earned; it cannot be had freely or wasted on dreams. |
Noticing Form — Grammar Notes
Notice the way Barton handles indirect or reported speech in the story. Much of Sophie’s “meeting” with Danny Casey reaches us through her own retelling to Geoff, and Geoff’s retelling to the father. Each retelling is slightly different. Notice also Barton’s use of the past continuous (“she was waiting”, “he was coming”) to suggest action that is open-ended, and his frequent use of questions and short sentences to mirror Sophie’s restless, hopeful mind. The dialogue is clipped and informal, full of contractions (“ain’t”, “innit”), reflecting working-class English speech.
Things to Do
1. Look up other stories or films which deal with hero-worship and fantasising about film or sports stars as a central theme.
Answer: Many works explore this theme. Notable examples are: J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, where the teenage Holden idolises certain figures and creates fantasies of saving the innocent; Bharati Mukherjee’s short fiction on the dreams of small-town Indian girls; the Hindi film Fan (2016), which examines how dangerous unchecked hero-worship can become; the film The Bling Ring (2013), based on real teenagers obsessed with celebrities; and R. K. Narayan’s stories where ordinary people in Malgudi spin private myths around famous men. In each, fantasy provides escape but also exposes the dreamer to disillusion. The works echo Sophie’s predicament — the gap between the ordinary self and the imagined glittering world of one’s idol.
Additional Short Questions and Answers
1. What does Sophie want to do after finishing school?
Answer: Sophie has several grand plans. She wants to open her own boutique — the most exclusive in the city — or, failing that, to become an actress, a fashion designer, or a manager. She tells Jansie that running a boutique is “not impossible” for a single woman.
2. Why does Jansie not approve of Sophie’s plans?
Answer: Jansie is realistic. She knows that they belong to a poor working-class family that cannot afford a boutique. She also fears Sophie’s father, who would react badly if he heard such talk. Jansie believes that they are “earmarked for the biscuit factory” and that dreaming of glamour is pointless.
3. Who is Danny Casey? Why is he important in the story?
Answer: Danny Casey is a brilliant young Irish footballer who plays for the local United team. He is the family’s hero — Sophie’s father and Geoff watch him every Saturday. For Sophie, Casey is more than a footballer; he is the romantic centre of her fantasies. She invents a private encounter with him as a way of escaping her drab life.
4. Where, according to Sophie, did she first meet Danny Casey?
Answer: Sophie tells Geoff that she met Casey on the pavement just outside Royce’s, that he was very polite, and that he signed an autograph for her on a piece of paper, which she then “lost”.
5. Why did Sophie feel a tightening in her throat at home?
Answer: When Sophie saw her overworked, weary mother carrying a heavy load of laundry across the cramped, steamy kitchen, the harsh reality of her family’s life struck her, and she felt a sudden surge of sorrow and pity that “tightened” her throat.
6. How did Sophie’s father react to the news of her meeting with Casey?
Answer: The father’s first reaction was angry disbelief. He scolded her, said she would land in serious trouble, and threatened to “knock her bloody head off” if he found out she had been telling lies. He could not accept that a famous footballer would meet his daughter.
7. Why does Sophie go to the canal towpath?
Answer: Sophie has fixed the lonely canal towpath as the place of her second secret meeting with Danny Casey. She slips away from home and waits there on a wooden bench, expecting him to come.
8. What did Sophie feel as she sat on the bench by the canal?
Answer: At first she felt excited and hopeful. As the evening turned dark and Casey did not come, she felt restless, then anxious, and finally crushed by disappointment. She also feared the consequences — Geoff’s warning, her father’s wrath, Jansie’s gossip.
9. What is meant by “weekly pilgrimage to the United”?
Answer: The phrase means that Sophie’s father and Geoff went every Saturday to watch United play football. Their devotion was so deep that the trip is compared to a religious pilgrimage.
10. What is the significance of the title “Going Places”?
Answer: The phrase “going places” usually means rising in life, becoming successful, travelling the world. The title applies ironically to Sophie. She does not really go anywhere — she stays in her cramped working-class home — but in her imagination she “goes” everywhere: into boutiques, on stages, on dates with footballers. The title points to the gap between her dream-life and her real life.
11. How does Geoff react when Sophie tells him about Casey?
Answer: At first Geoff is incredulous; then he becomes thoughtful and even worried. He reminds her that thousands of girls would fall for a star like Casey and warns her not to get involved. Despite his usual silence, he passes the news on to his father.
12. Why does Sophie not want her father to know about the meeting?
Answer: Sophie knows her father will refuse to believe her, will accuse her of lying, and will probably punish her. She also knows he detests her grand notions and would mock the very idea that a famous footballer would speak to a girl like her.
13. What goal had Casey scored, and how was it described?
Answer: The previous Saturday, Casey had scored a brilliant goal at the United match. He was described as having “ghosted past the lumbering defenders” — gliding past them as silently and easily as a ghost — before placing the ball in the net.
14. Why is Sophie disappointed at the end of the story?
Answer: She is disappointed because Danny Casey, of course, never comes to meet her on the towpath. He never knew of any such meeting. Slowly Sophie has to face the truth that the entire encounter was her own invention — and yet, even on her way home, she begins building the fantasy again.
15. How does Barton suggest that the meeting was imaginary?
Answer: Barton drops several quiet hints: Sophie has “lost” the autograph; she cannot describe Casey’s voice exactly; her details shift slightly each time she retells the story; Casey does not come for the second meeting; and the closing paragraphs slip into pure fantasy as Sophie imagines the door opening at Royce’s. Together these touches suggest the encounter never really happened.
Long Answer Questions
1. Compare and contrast Sophie and Jansie as friends and as personalities.
Answer: Sophie and Jansie are classmates, neighbours and best friends, yet they could hardly be more different in temperament. Sophie is a romantic, a dreamer who refuses to settle for the working-class fate her family has accepted. She talks of opening a boutique, of acting, of meeting glamorous footballers — her conversation is constantly threaded with “one day” and “I will”. Jansie is the opposite: she is sharp, realistic and clear-eyed. She knows that they have neither the money nor the connections for boutiques, and she knows the biscuit factory is waiting for them. She is also “nosey” — quick to gather news and pass it on — which is precisely why Sophie does not trust her with secrets. Where Sophie’s mind soars, Jansie’s stays close to the ground; where Sophie hides her dreams, Jansie speaks her doubts plainly. The contrast is not unkind: Jansie cares for Sophie and tries gently to protect her from disappointment. Together they form Barton’s favourite pair — the dreamer and the realist — through whose differences he reveals both the beauty and the danger of fantasy.
2. “Sophie’s dreams reveal both her hopes and her helplessness.” Discuss.
Answer: Sophie’s daydreams are not random — they are precisely the dreams of a girl who feels trapped. Each fantasy is the mirror image of something she lacks. She imagines a glamorous boutique because her real home is small and shabby; she imagines being an actress with “real money” because her family struggles for cash; she imagines a romantic meeting with Danny Casey because no one in her real life seems to value or notice her; she imagines a wider city through Geoff because her own world is so narrow. So her dreams light up her hopes, but the very intensity of those hopes shows how limited her actual life is. She is helpless against her father’s anger, her family’s poverty, and the social system that has earmarked her for the biscuit factory. She cannot change any of these things, so she changes them in her head. By the end of the story, when she sits alone on the canal bench, the helplessness is fully visible: not even her chosen hero will come to her. Yet the moment she stands up to walk home, she begins dreaming again — proof that for Sophie, dreaming is not a luxury but the only way she knows to keep her self-respect.
3. Discuss the role of the family in Sophie’s life.
Answer: The family is both the cage and the comfort of Sophie’s life. Her father is the strongest force at home — coarse, tired, dismissive, ready to punish anything he calls foolish. He represents the working-class ceiling that Sophie’s dreams keep banging against. Her mother is silent, exhausted, almost a figure of pity; the sight of her bent under household work moves Sophie deeply. Her younger brother Derek echoes the father’s small-mindedness — “Why would you want to do that?” Only her elder brother Geoff offers her something different. Geoff is silent and mysterious; she sees in him a possible bridge to a wider world, and he is the only family member she trusts with her secret. Yet even Geoff finally tells the father, and the family’s response — disbelief, anger, mockery — pushes Sophie deeper into private fantasy. So while the family gives her shelter, love and companionship at football matches, it also fences her in. The story shows that for a sensitive teenager, the same household can be both the source of warmth and the wall against ambition.
4. How does A. R. Barton portray the conflict between fantasy and reality in “Going Places”?
Answer: Barton constructs the entire story as a quiet duel between fantasy and reality. He places his fantasies in bright, glamorous settings — a chic boutique, a stage, an autograph outside Royce’s, a moonlit canal towpath. He places his reality in flat, drab settings — a steamy kitchen, a sink full of dishes, a father in his vest, a mother in a faded dress. Sophie travels constantly between these two worlds, but the world of fantasy is always defeated by the small, stubborn details of the real. The autograph is “lost”; Casey does not come to the towpath; the father will not believe her. Barton refuses to make the conflict melodramatic. He does not let Sophie cry out or break down; he simply lets reality whisper its no, again and again, until even Sophie can hear it. Then, with a touch of compassion, he allows her to start dreaming again on the way home — because he knows that the human mind cannot live entirely on cold facts. The result is one of the most delicate portraits of the fantasy–reality conflict in school literature.
5. Explain the symbolism of Danny Casey in the story.
Answer: On the surface Danny Casey is a real footballer in the story — young, Irish, gifted, the family’s idol. But for Sophie he is much more. He is the symbol of everything she cannot have: youth that is celebrated, talent that pays, a name that strangers know, a body that “ghosts” past obstacles. He is glamour, escape, and possibility wrapped into one slim figure. Because he is famous and unreachable, he is the perfect screen on which Sophie can project her romantic longings — he is “safe” in the sense that he will never actually appear to disappoint her. He stands also for adolescent hero-worship: the natural human need, especially in the young, to find someone larger and more shining than themselves to dream about. By making Sophie’s fantasy attach to Casey rather than to a real boy in her neighbourhood, Barton shows how dreams of upward escape often fasten themselves on celebrities, making the gap between the dreamer and the dreamed-of even wider.
6. Bring out the importance of the canal scene at the end of the story.
Answer: The canal scene is the emotional climax of “Going Places”. After all her bright daydreams, Sophie comes alone to the lonely towpath, sits on a wooden bench, and waits for Danny Casey. Barton fills the scene with images of fading light, dark water, distant lamps and silent passers-by — every detail underlining her loneliness. Casey, of course, never comes. The long minutes of waiting force Sophie, for the first time, to confront the silence of reality: there is no autograph, no romance, no glamour, only a girl on a bench. And yet, very gently, the scene also shows the resilience of fantasy: as Sophie walks home, the dream begins to repair itself in her mind. The canal scene is therefore both the moment of disillusion and the moment of refusal to be disillusioned — Sophie loses Casey, but she does not lose her habit of dreaming. In a single, quiet sequence Barton expresses the entire psychology of his story.
7. What is the role of class and social background in the story?
Answer: Class is the invisible wall against which all of Sophie’s dreams crash. The family lives in a small house, the father works long hours, the mother is exhausted, and the children’s expected future is the biscuit factory. The choices Sophie can actually make are tightly limited by money and tradition: there is no fund to start a boutique, no theatre school nearby, no social network leading to fashion. Even her language — and Jansie’s — carries the rough informality of working-class speech. Within this world, dreaming of being like Mary Quant or of dating Danny Casey is not just unrealistic; it is, to her father, almost an act of disloyalty to one’s class. Barton does not preach about class; he simply lets it press in from every side, in the form of dirty laundry, a vest, a sneer, a warning about money. The sadness of “Going Places” is largely the sadness of class — a child whose imagination is far larger than the slot life has reserved for her.
8. “Going Places is essentially a story about adolescence.” Justify.
Answer: Almost every feature of the story belongs to adolescence. Sophie is at the age when childhood certainty has gone and adult limits have not yet hardened — the age of intense daydreams, hero-worship, secret crushes, sudden swings between hope and despair. Her crush on a footballer, her invention of a romantic meeting, her need to confide in an older brother, her irritation with a “nosey” friend, her ache to be more than her parents — all of these are textbook adolescent emotions. Even Jansie, with her stubborn realism, is a recognisable adolescent type: the friend who has grown up too fast. Barton handles these feelings without mockery and without sentimentality. He treats Sophie’s pain as seriously as he would an adult’s, and that is why the story has stayed in school anthologies for decades. Read in this way, “Going Places” is less a story about whether Sophie really met Danny Casey and more a story about what it feels like to be young, poor and full of longing.
9. Comment on the title “Going Places”.
Answer: The title is rich and ironic. “Going places” in everyday English means moving up in life, becoming successful, being on the road to fame and wealth. Sophie wants exactly this — to “go places” in life through her boutique, her acting, her romance with a famous footballer. But the truth of the story is that she goes nowhere. She does not leave her town, her class, or even her front room except for one quiet walk to the canal. The only “places” she goes to are inside her own mind. Barton, by giving the story this ordinary, hopeful phrase as its title, sets up a sharp contrast between the bright meaning of the words and the small, sad shape of the actual events. The title invites the reader to ask whether dreams of “going places” can ever come true for a girl in Sophie’s circumstances — and to feel the weight of the answer.
10. How does the relationship between Sophie and Geoff develop in the story?
Answer: Geoff is the closest thing Sophie has to a confidant. From the start, she watches him with admiration — he is older, almost a man, an apprentice mechanic who travels daily to a distant workshop. His silence intrigues her; she imagines that behind it lies a world of secret experiences. She prefers him to her sharp friend Jansie, her gruff father and her childish younger brother Derek. So when she invents the meeting with Danny Casey, it is to Geoff that she carries the secret — partly to share, partly to test whether he will believe her, partly because telling him makes the fantasy more solid. Geoff’s reactions move from disbelief to mild concern. He warns her against entanglement with a famous man and then, against her wish, tells the father. The betrayal stings, yet it also shows that Geoff cares enough about her to speak. By the end of the story, Geoff has neither destroyed her dream nor saved her from it — he has simply done what an older brother can do: listen, worry, and pass the difficult news on. Their relationship is one of the warm, real anchors in a story otherwise full of imagined things.
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
1. Who is the author of “Going Places”?
(a) Anees Jung (b) A. R. Barton (c) William Saroyan (d) Selma Lagerlof
Answer: (b) A. R. Barton
2. Where does A. R. Barton live and write?
(a) London (b) Dublin (c) Zurich (d) New York
Answer: (c) Zurich
3. Sophie and Jansie are described as being “earmarked for”
(a) the biscuit factory (b) the textile mill (c) university (d) the theatre
Answer: (a) the biscuit factory
4. What kind of shop does Sophie want to open?
(a) A bakery (b) A boutique (c) A bookshop (d) A cafe
Answer: (b) A boutique
5. Sophie’s brother Geoff works as
(a) a clerk (b) an apprentice mechanic (c) a footballer (d) a teacher
Answer: (b) an apprentice mechanic
6. Who is Sophie’s youngest brother?
(a) Geoff (b) Danny (c) Derek (d) Tom
Answer: (c) Derek
7. Danny Casey is a
(a) cricketer (b) actor (c) Irish footballer (d) singer
Answer: (c) Irish footballer
8. Casey “ghosted past the” —
(a) goalkeeper (b) lumbering defenders (c) coach (d) referee
Answer: (b) lumbering defenders
9. Where does Sophie say she met Casey for the first time?
(a) Inside the stadium (b) Outside Royce’s (c) At a bus stop (d) In a café
Answer: (b) Outside Royce’s
10. What did Casey supposedly give Sophie?
(a) A football (b) A photograph (c) An autograph on a piece of paper (d) A flower
Answer: (c) An autograph on a piece of paper
11. What happened to the autograph?
(a) She framed it (b) She lost it (c) She gave it to Geoff (d) She gave it to Jansie
Answer: (b) She lost it
12. Where is the second supposed meeting fixed?
(a) Outside Royce’s (b) On the canal towpath (c) At the football ground (d) In the school
Answer: (b) On the canal towpath
13. Who tells Sophie’s father about the supposed meeting?
(a) Jansie (b) Derek (c) Geoff (d) The mother
Answer: (c) Geoff
14. The father’s reaction to the news is
(a) joy (b) angry disbelief (c) silence (d) tears
Answer: (b) angry disbelief
15. Why does Sophie not trust Jansie with the secret?
(a) Jansie is unkind (b) Jansie is “nosey” and gossips (c) Jansie hates Casey (d) Jansie is too young
Answer: (b) Jansie is “nosey” and gossips
16. The family’s “weekly pilgrimage” is to
(a) church (b) the cinema (c) the United football match (d) the market
Answer: (c) the United football match
17. What does Sophie feel when she sees her tired mother in the kitchen?
(a) Anger (b) A tightening in her throat (c) Indifference (d) Joy
Answer: (b) A tightening in her throat
18. Words had to be “prized out of” Geoff like
(a) gold from rock (b) stones out of the ground (c) teeth from a horse (d) seeds from a fruit
Answer: (b) stones out of the ground
19. What is Sophie’s father wearing while sitting at home?
(a) A suit (b) A vest (c) A shirt and tie (d) A coat
Answer: (b) A vest
20. The phrase “going places” usually means
(a) travelling abroad (b) becoming successful in life (c) wandering aimlessly (d) shopping
Answer: (b) becoming successful in life
21. Geoff’s main warning to Sophie is
(a) Casey is married (b) thousands of girls would fall for him; do not get involved (c) Casey is dangerous (d) Casey is too old
Answer: (b) thousands of girls would fall for him; do not get involved
22. The father threatens, if Sophie is lying, to
(a) lock her up (b) “knock her bloody head off” (c) send her away (d) stop her food
Answer: (b) “knock her bloody head off”
23. Sophie compares the boutique she dreams of running to
(a) Mary Quant’s (b) Coco Chanel’s (c) a small village shop (d) a market stall
Answer: (a) Mary Quant’s
24. The story ends with Sophie
(a) meeting Casey at last (b) walking home alone, and her fantasy beginning again (c) telling Jansie everything (d) leaving home
Answer: (b) walking home alone, and her fantasy beginning again
25. The chief theme of the story is
(a) the importance of football (b) the gap between adolescent fantasy and working-class reality (c) the joys of fame (d) the dangers of city life
Answer: (b) the gap between adolescent fantasy and working-class reality
Extract-Based Questions
Extract 1: “When I leave,” Sophie said, coming out of the shop, “I’m going to have a boutique.” Jansie, linking arms with her along the kerb, said, “Takes money, Soaf, something like that.”
(i) Where are the two girls walking? Answer: They are walking home from school along the kerb, having just come out of a shop.
(ii) What is Sophie’s plan after she leaves school? Answer: She plans to open her own boutique — the most exclusive in the city.
(iii) What is Jansie’s reaction, and what does it tell us about her? Answer: Jansie reminds her that such a plan needs money. This shows Jansie’s practical, realistic outlook.
(iv) Find a word in the extract that means “edge of the road”. Answer: “Kerb”.
Extract 2: “Words had to be prized out of him like stones out of a ground.”
(i) Whom is the line about? Answer: About Geoff, Sophie’s elder brother.
(ii) What does the line mean? Answer: Geoff was extremely silent and reserved; making him speak required hard effort.
(iii) What figure of speech is used? Answer: A simile — “like stones out of a ground”.
(iv) Why was Sophie attracted to this very silence? Answer: Because she imagined that behind Geoff’s silence lay a wider, more interesting world she had never seen.
Extract 3: “She wished she was their daughter and not Margaret Casey.” (Sophie’s secret thought about Casey’s parents)
(i) Whose daughter does Sophie wish to be? Answer: Danny Casey’s parents’.
(ii) What does this wish reveal about Sophie? Answer: It reveals her deep fascination with Casey and her wish to escape her own working-class family.
(iii) Identify the emotion at the heart of this line. Answer: Romantic longing mixed with class-based discontent.
(iv) How does this connect to the title of the story? Answer: It is part of Sophie’s wish to “go places” by becoming someone other than herself.
Extract 4: “When she got there it was already late… She sat alone on the wooden bench beneath the elm and waited.”
(i) Where has she gone? Answer: To the canal towpath, where she expects to meet Danny Casey.
(ii) Whom is she waiting for? Answer: Danny Casey.
(iii) What is the mood of the scene? Answer: Lonely, hopeful, then quietly disappointed.
(iv) How does this scene reveal the theme of the story? Answer: It is the moment where Sophie’s fantasy is forced to face reality — the awaited meeting never happens.
Character Sketches
Sophie
Sophie is the protagonist of “Going Places” and one of the most touching teenage characters in the Class 12 Flamingo book. She is a school-going girl from a poor English working-class family, on the threshold of leaving school. Outwardly her life is small — a cramped house, a sharp father, a worn-out mother, two brothers, a single best friend — but inwardly her life is vast. She dreams constantly: of opening an exclusive boutique, of becoming an actress with “real money”, of running a fashion house, and most of all of meeting and being loved by the brilliant young footballer Danny Casey. Sophie is sensitive, imaginative, observant and emotionally vulnerable; the sight of her tired mother brings a tightening in her throat. She is also lonely — unable to share her best secrets with the friend she has, forced to invent a wholly imaginary romance to feel special. She is not dishonest; rather, she has a powerful imagination that runs ahead of the truth. By the end of the story, when Casey does not appear at the canal, Sophie is brought face to face with the fact that her glamorous life lives only in her head. Yet even this knowledge does not destroy her. Walking home, she begins the dream again. Sophie is, in this way, both pitiable and admirable — pitiable because reality so cruelly outpaces her, admirable because she refuses to let reality kill her hope.
Geoff
Geoff is Sophie’s elder brother, an apprentice mechanic in his late teens. He is the silent, almost mysterious presence in the household. His chief feature is his reticence — “words had to be prized out of him like stones out of the ground”. He travels every day across the city to his workshop, and to Sophie that daily journey gives him an aura of unknown experience and adult freedom. Geoff is kind to Sophie in his own quiet way: he listens to her secret about Danny Casey when she will not tell anyone else, and he does not at first laugh at her. But he is also responsible: when he begins to fear that Sophie is heading for trouble, he tells their father, partly out of concern and partly out of working-class loyalty. He warns her that famous footballers attract thousands of girls, and that getting involved with one is dangerous. Geoff is not glamorous, but he is the warmest real human bond Sophie has in the story. He represents the sort of older sibling who half-understands a younger sister’s longings — enough to sympathise, not enough to share them.
Jansie
Jansie is Sophie’s school friend and neighbour, the realist to Sophie’s romantic. She accepts that they are both “earmarked for the biscuit factory” and has no patience for grand fantasies of boutiques and stardom. She is described as “nosey” — quick to gather news and pass it on — which is exactly why Sophie does not trust her with secrets. Yet Jansie is not unkind. She links arms with Sophie on the kerb, walks home with her, listens to her dreams, and gently warns her against speaking such things in front of her father. Her common sense is at times painful but never malicious. She is the friend who will not lie to comfort you. In Barton’s design, Jansie acts as the voice of working-class realism that the story refuses to silence — a useful counterbalance to Sophie’s flights, and a quiet reminder that not all young people in such circumstances escape into fantasy.
Danny Casey
Danny Casey is the young Irish footballer who plays for the local United team. Within the story he is more an idea than a fully drawn character, because the reader sees him almost entirely through Sophie’s imagination. What we are told is striking: he is young, gifted, slim, dark, gentle in manner; he “ghosts past the lumbering defenders” on the football pitch; he has scored a brilliant goal at the recent United match; he is the family’s hero and the city’s rising star. Through Sophie’s eyes, however, he becomes much more — a polite stranger outside Royce’s, an autograph-giver, a future date on the canal towpath, a romantic possibility. The real Casey almost certainly knows nothing of any of this. As a character he stands in the story for the figure of the idol on whom adolescent dreams hang their hopes — distant, glamorous, attractive, and finally untouchable. His non-arrival at the canal is, in a strange way, the most important thing he does in the story.
Sophie’s Father (minor)
Sophie’s father is a working-class man worn down by labour. He sits at home in his vest, drinks his beer, watches television, and reacts to his daughter’s grand plans with snorts, mockery, and occasional anger. He is not abusive in any deep sense, but he is harsh and dismissive, threatening to “knock her bloody head off” if she has been telling lies about Casey. He is devoted to football and makes the weekly pilgrimage to the United match. He embodies the limits of the family’s social world — limits Sophie cannot accept and he cannot imagine beyond.
Themes
1. Escape from Reality
The deepest theme of “Going Places” is the human urge to escape an unsatisfying reality through fantasy. Sophie’s home is small, her father gruff, her mother exhausted, her future limited to the biscuit factory. Faced with these unyielding facts, she does not rebel openly; she escapes inwardly. Every dream — boutique, acting career, meeting with Danny Casey — is an exit door from the room of her real life. Barton handles this escape sympathetically: he shows that fantasy can be a survival mechanism, a way of holding self-respect intact when the world offers little of it.
2. Hero-Worship
The story dramatises the very common adolescent experience of hero-worship. Danny Casey, a real football star, is converted by Sophie’s mind into a personal saviour and romantic partner. The whole family worships him too, but at a healthy distance — they cheer him from the stands. Sophie crosses the line: she imagines that Casey notices her, speaks to her, gives her an autograph, agrees to meet her. Barton uses this to show how hero-worship, which begins as innocent admiration, can slip into delusion when the worshipper is lonely enough.
3. Class and Social Barriers
“Going Places” is a quiet but unmistakable story about class. The household details — vest, dirty kitchen, biscuit factory, rough speech, weekly football pilgrimage — anchor the family firmly in the English working class. Sophie’s dreams are precisely the kind of dreams that this class structure refuses to fund. Without saying a word about politics, Barton lets us feel how class shapes possibility, and how cruelly it limits a sensitive, imaginative girl.
4. Adolescent Dreams
The story is a careful study of the dreaming mind of a teenager. Sophie’s hopes are extravagant, her shifts in mood sudden, her secrets close to her heart, her trust in her older brother strong, her irritation with her practical friend keen. All of this is the texture of adolescence. Barton neither mocks Sophie nor celebrates her uncritically; he simply shows how rich, how fragile and how unstable an adolescent imagination can be.
5. Illusion versus Reality
The whole story turns on the contrast between what Sophie wishes and what is. Her boutique is illusion; the biscuit factory is reality. Her romance with Casey is illusion; the lonely bench by the canal is reality. Even the autograph is “lost”, suggesting it never existed. Yet Barton refuses to make reality the only winner. The story closes with Sophie beginning to dream again — proof that reality cannot fully erase illusion, and that for some hearts, illusion is itself part of reality. This is the delicate balance that gives “Going Places” its lasting beauty.
6. The Loneliness of the Imaginative Mind
Underneath the more obvious themes runs a quieter one: the loneliness of having an imagination bigger than one’s surroundings. Sophie cannot share her dreams with Jansie, who would mock them; nor with her father, who would punish them; nor fully with Geoff, who would worry. She must therefore carry her own inner life almost entirely alone. The image of her sitting on a wooden bench by a darkening canal, waiting for someone who will never come, is one of the most touching pictures of adolescent loneliness in modern English short fiction.
Conclusion
“Going Places” by A. R. Barton, prescribed by ASSEB for Class 12 / HS 2nd Year English (Flamingo), is a quiet but unforgettable story about the inner life of a working-class girl whose imagination is far bigger than her circumstances. Through Sophie, Jansie, Geoff and the absent figure of Danny Casey, Barton explores adolescent dreams, hero-worship, class barriers, and the delicate balance between illusion and reality. The story does not offer easy lessons. It does not punish Sophie for dreaming, nor does it reward her with a real meeting. Instead, it simply lets us watch a young heart go on dreaming, even after the canal grows dark and the bench grows cold. For HS 2nd Year students preparing for the ASSEB examination, mastering this chapter means understanding both the surface plot and the silent emotional currents below it — the longing, the loneliness, and the quiet courage with which Sophie keeps “going places” inside her own mind.