Going Places — Class 12 MCQs with Answers

Key concepts: Going Places (Class 12 English)

A. R. Barton's story of adolescent fantasising and hero worship. Sophie, a working-class schoolgirl bound for the biscuit factory, dreams of boutiques and film stardom and tells her family she has met the footballer Danny Casey. She waits by the canal for a meeting that never happens, and walks home carrying the burden of a story only she believes.

A. R. Barton

A modern writer who lives in Zurich and writes in English. In 'Going Places' he explores 'the theme of adolescent fantasising and hero worship'.

Sophie's dreams

A boutique — 'the most amazing shop this city's ever seen' — and, failing that, 'I'll be like Mary Quant… I'll be a natural.' Then an actress, because 'there's real money in that', or a fashion designer, 'something a bit sophisticated'.

Jansie the realist

She knows 'they were both earmarked for the biscuit factory' and grows melancholy: 'It's only a few months away now, Soaf, you really should be sensible… your dad would never allow it.'

The family's poverty

Her father eats shepherd's pie 'as hard as he could go, his plump face still grimy and sweat-marked from the day'. The small room is steamy from the stove, cluttered, with 'the dirty washing piled up in the corner'.

The apron-bow image

Sophie watches her mother's 'back stooped over the sink and wondered at the incongruity of the delicate bow which fastened her apron strings. The delicate-seeming bow and the crooked back.'

The mother's reply

To 'If ever I come into money I'll buy a boutique', the answer is: 'if you ever come into money you'll buy us a blessed decent house to live in, thank you very much.'

Geoff

Three years out of school, an apprentice mechanic travelling each day 'to the far side of the city'. He says little: 'Words had to be prized out of him like stones out of the ground.'

Why Sophie envies his silence

'When he wasn't speaking it was as though he was away somewhere, out there in the world in those places she had never been.' She longs to be admitted 'more deeply into her brother's affections'.

The fantasy of escape

She sees herself riding behind Geoff — 'He wore new, shining black leathers and she a yellow dress with a kind of cape that flew out behind. There was the sound of applause as the world rose to greet them.'

The claim

'I met Danny Casey,' she says — in the arcade, outside Royce's window. She describes him: 'he has green eyes. Gentle eyes. And he's not so tall as you'd think.'

The father's disdain

His expression on hearing it 'was one of disdain'. He recalls that he 'once knew a man who had known Tom Finney', and warns her: 'One of these days you're going to talk yourself into a load of trouble.'

Geoff's verdict

He half wants to believe her but does not: 'It's the unlikeliest thing I ever heard,' and 'As if he'd ever show up.' Sophie's own reading of her father is that 'He don't believe you — though he'd like to.'

The Saturday match

United won two-nil and Casey drove in the second goal, 'a blend of innocence and Irish genius', going round two big defenders 'with her father screaming for him to pass, and beating the hesitant goalkeeper from a dozen yards'.

The betrayal to Jansie

Geoff had told his mate Frank. 'Damn that Geoff, this was a Geoff thing not a Jansie thing… was nothing sacred?' She is relieved to find Geoff had not mentioned the date — 'He believed in her after all.'

The wait by the canal

A sheltered path lit only by 'the glare of the lamps from the wharf across the water', and 'a wooden bench beneath a solitary elm where lovers sometimes came'. She feels 'the pangs of doubt stirring inside me'.

Resignation

'Resignation was no sudden thing.' She foresees 'the slow walk home, and Geoff's disappointed face' — but holds on to 'But we know how it was, Danny and me'. Passing the pub she is glad to see her father's bicycle: he will not be home.

The ending

Walking back through the arcade she rehearses the meeting again in the present tense — the freckled nose, the shy smile 'exposing teeth with gaps between', the green eyes 'gentle, almost afraid. Like a gazelle's' — and then relives Saturday's goal.