Going Places (CH-8) Notes – Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 8

In this post we have given the Notes of Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 8 Going Places (by A. R. Barton). These are useful for students preparing for their Class 12 board exams.

इस पोस्ट में कक्षा 12 अंग्रेज़ी (Flamingo) के पाठ 8 Going Places के नोट्स दिए गए हैं। यह उन सभी विद्यार्थियों के लिए उपयोगी है जो इस वर्ष कक्षा 12 की बोर्ड परीक्षा देने वाले हैं।

अध्याय का सार हिंदी में (Chapter Summary in Hindi)

“Going Places” ए. आर. बार्टन (A. R. Barton) की एक कहानी है, जिसका मुख्य विषय है किशोर अवस्था की कल्पनाएँ और किसी प्रसिद्ध व्यक्ति की अंधी प्रशंसा (adolescent fantasising and hero-worship)। कहानी की नायिका सोफ़ी (Sophie) एक साधारण, मेहनतकश (working-class) परिवार की स्कूली लड़की है।

स्कूल से घर लौटते समय सोफ़ी अपनी सहेली जैंसी (Jansie) से कहती है कि स्कूल छोड़ने के बाद वह अपना बुटीक (boutique) खोलेगी। जैंसी समझाती है कि इसके लिए पैसा चाहिए। तब सोफ़ी कहती है कि वह पहले मैनेजर बनेगी, या अभिनेत्री (actress), या फ़ैशन डिज़ाइनर। जैंसी जानती है कि दोनों का भविष्य बिस्कुट फ़ैक्टरी में काम करना ही है, इसलिए वह उदास हो जाती है।

घर पर सोफ़ी के पिता दिन भर की थकान के साथ खाना खा रहे होते हैं और छोटा भाई डेरेक (Derek) उसका मज़ाक उड़ाता है। सोफ़ी अपनी माँ की झुकी हुई पीठ और एप्रन की नाज़ुक गाँठ को देखकर भावुक हो जाती है। उसका बड़ा भाई ज्योफ़ (Geoff) एक अप्रेंटिस मैकेनिक है जो बहुत कम बोलता है। सोफ़ी उसे सबसे ज़्यादा पसंद करती है और उसके साथ मोटरसाइकिल पर दूर जाने के सपने देखती है।

सोफ़ी ज्योफ़ को बताती है कि आर्केड (arcade) में उसकी मुलाकात मशहूर आयरिश फ़ुटबॉलर डैनी केसी (Danny Casey) से हुई। ज्योफ़ को यकीन नहीं होता और पिता इसे उसकी एक और “मनगढ़ंत कहानी” मानते हैं। सोफ़ी ज्योफ़ को बताती है कि केसी ने अगले हफ़्ते फिर मिलने और ऑटोग्राफ़ देने का वादा किया है, और उससे यह बात किसी को न बताने का वचन लेती है।

शनिवार को पूरा परिवार यूनाइटेड (United) का मैच देखने जाता है, जहाँ केसी दूसरा गोल करता है और टीम 2-0 से जीतती है। बाद में जैंसी को भी यह बात पता चल जाती है। तय दिन सोफ़ी अँधेरे में नहर (canal) के किनारे एक अकेले एल्म के पेड़ के नीचे बेंच पर केसी का इंतज़ार करती है, पर वह नहीं आता। धीरे-धीरे वह मान लेती है कि वह नहीं आएगा। घर लौटते हुए वह फिर उस मुलाकात की कल्पना करती है।

कहानी कभी साफ़ नहीं बताती कि मुलाकात सच में हुई थी या केवल सोफ़ी की कल्पना थी। संदेश यह है कि किशोर अपने सीमित जीवन से बचने के लिए सपनों का सहारा लेते हैं, पर सपनों और सच्चाई के बीच संतुलन ज़रूरी है।

Key Points to Learn from This Chapter

• The full story of Sophie, Jansie, Geoff and Danny Casey in the order of events
• Why the story never settles whether Sophie truly met Danny Casey, with evidence for both views
• Character sketches of Sophie, Jansie, Geoff, the father and Danny Casey
• The theme and sub-theme, ready to use in answers
• Language points from the NCERT exercises: present participles, metaphorical expressions and colloquial words

The Writer and the Theme

Going Places was written by A. R. Barton. The textbook introduces him only as a modern writer living in Zurich who writes in English; it gives no further details about his life. According to the book, the story deals with adolescent fantasising and hero-worship.

Theme in simple words: a teenager who finds her everyday life dull and limited escapes into an imagined, far more exciting life, and she idolises a famous person as part of that escape.

Numbers Worth Remembering

• 2-0 – United’s winning score in the Saturday match; Casey scores the second goal.
• 3 years – how long Geoff has been out of school, working as an apprentice mechanic.
• 4 – the other people in Sophie’s home: father, mother, Geoff and little Derek.

Order of Events at a Glance

1. Walking home from school: Sophie tells Jansie she will own a boutique. Jansie doubts it and feels sad because she knows both of them are destined for the biscuit factory.
2. That evening at home: Sophie finds Geoff working on his motorcycle and tells him she met Danny Casey in the arcade.
3. In front of the television: Geoff repeats the news to the family. The father reacts with disdain and calls it one of her wild stories.
4. Later, in Geoff’s room: Sophie makes Geoff promise to keep it secret and tells the whole story, including Casey’s promise to meet her the next week with an autograph.
5. Saturday: The family watches United win 2-0. Casey scores the second goal and Sophie feels proud.
6. The following week: Jansie confronts Sophie, having heard the story from her brother Frank, who heard it from Geoff.
7. After dark by the canal: Sophie waits alone on a bench under a single elm tree, but Casey never comes.
8. Walking home: Passing through the arcade, she imagines the meeting once again. The narration slips into “you”, and the story ends with her reliving Saturday’s goal, never confirming whether the meeting was real.

The Story Part by Part

1. A Dreamer and a Realist

On the way back from school, Sophie announces that she will run a boutique once she finishes school. Jansie, who walks arm in arm with her, reminds her that a boutique needs money. Sophie simply keeps raising her ambitions as they talk: she will first be a manager, like the famous designer Mary Quant, or else an actress, since actresses earn a lot, or perhaps a fashion designer. Jansie knows that both girls are already marked out for jobs at the biscuit factory. She also points out that shop work pays poorly and that Sophie’s father would never permit it. Thinking about this, Jansie becomes gloomy and wishes Sophie would stop talking like this.

Exam point: If asked where the girls are likely to work after school, the answer is the biscuit factory. This settled, ordinary future helps explain why Sophie’s dreams feel so important to her: they are her escape from it.

2. Life at Home and the Image of the Apron Bow

At home, Sophie’s father is gulping down shepherd’s pie as fast as he can. His face is still dirty and sweaty from a hard day’s work. Little Derek, hanging on his father’s chair, teases Sophie, saying she believes money grows on trees. Sophie watches her mother bending over the sink and is struck by the mismatch (incongruity) between the dainty bow tying her apron strings and her bent, crooked back. The small room is steamy and untidy, with dirty washing heaped in a corner, and Sophie feels a lump in her throat.

This image places something small and pretty against a body worn down by years of housework. The book only gives the picture; reading it as a contrast between delicacy and hardship is one interpretation.

3. Geoff, the Brother Sophie Adores

Sophie finds Geoff kneeling on newspapers in the next room, fiddling with a part of his motorcycle. He left school three years ago and now works as an apprentice mechanic, travelling every day to the other side of the city. Geoff hardly ever speaks unless he must; the story says getting words out of him was like digging stones out of the ground. His silence fascinates Sophie and even makes her jealous. She imagines that he has a whole hidden world of places and people that she has never been allowed to enter.

4. The Motorcycle Daydream

One of Sophie’s clearest daydreams shows her riding pillion behind Geoff. He wears new, shiny black leathers, and she wears a yellow dress with a cape flying behind her, while the whole world applauds them. This dream has nothing to do with Danny Casey. It shows that Sophie already has a habit of escaping into imagined glamour; the Casey story can be seen as the biggest example of that same habit.

Hero-worship: treating a famous person, here the footballer Danny Casey, as more glamorous, important or reachable than he really is, often as a way of feeling close to a more exciting life.

5. “I Met Danny Casey”

Sophie tells Geoff that she has met Danny Casey. Geoff refuses to believe it. When he asks whether she has told their father, she shakes her head, feeling a little hurt that Geoff does not realise he is always the first person she shares her secrets with. She explains that she was looking at clothes in Royce’s shop window when Casey came and stood next to her. She describes his green, gentle eyes and says he is shorter than people would expect.

6. The Family Scene and the Father’s Disbelief

Later, while the family sits by the television, Geoff mentions that Sophie met Danny Casey. Sophie squirms uncomfortably (the book does not say why; one can infer she is uneasy that her father now knows). Her father’s face shows disdain. He then mentions, almost with reverence, that he once knew a man who had known the famous footballer Tom Finney, though that was long ago. The family then argues about whether Casey will be looked after properly and whether he will keep his head with so many distractions for a young player.

When Sophie adds that Casey plans to buy a shop, her father dismisses it as another of her wild stories. Geoff says that she met him in the arcade, but the father only warns Sophie that one day her talk will land her in serious trouble. Geoff himself still does not fully believe her.

Exam point: Does the father believe Sophie? No. His look of disdain and his “wild stories” remark both prove it; use both pieces of evidence in your answer.

7. Sophie’s Full Account in Geoff’s Room

In Geoff’s room, lit by the warm amber light of a lamp and decorated with a United team poster and photographs of Casey, “the young Irish prodigy”, Sophie makes Geoff promise to keep her secret because she fears their father. Geoff teases that Casey must have plenty of girlfriends, but Sophie insists that he is quiet and not like that. She then tells the whole story:

• She spoke first and asked if he was Danny Casey.
• She recognised his accent from his television interviews.
• She asked for an autograph for little Derek, but neither of them had paper or a pen.
• They chatted about the clothes in Royce’s window.
• He seemed lonely to her, being so far from his home in the west of Ireland.
• As he left, he promised to give her the autograph if she met him again the next week.

Geoff’s final comment is that it is the most unlikely thing he has ever heard.

8. The Saturday Match

On Saturday the family makes its regular trip to watch United, described as a weekly pilgrimage. Sophie, her father and Derek stand near the goal, while Geoff watches from higher up with his friends. United win 2-0, and Casey scores the second goal by slipping past the slow defenders and beating the hesitant goalkeeper from about twelve yards. Sophie glows with pride and Geoff is overjoyed. On the bus home someone wishes Casey were English, and at home little Derek tells his mother that Ireland will win the World Cup, showing his own small hero-worship.

9. Jansie Hears the News

The next week, Jansie tells Sophie that Geoff told her brother Frank about the meeting. Sophie is angry that something meant to stay between her and Geoff has spread, but she is relieved that Jansie knows nothing about the promised date. This tells her that Geoff kept that part secret, and she feels he has not let her down after all. Sophie plays the story down, saying it was a small thing and that the autograph did not happen because they had no paper or pen. She says she does not want her father to find out or people queuing outside their house. Jansie promises to keep quiet.

10. Waiting by the Canal

After dark, Sophie goes down to the canal and sits on a wooden bench under a lone elm tree. She had always felt this was the ideal place for a secret meeting, away from watching eyes. Here the story moves into her own thoughts in the first person and present tense. She keeps imagining Casey arriving, then imagining that he will not come, and she feels sharp pangs of doubt. She feels low because she will never be able to prove the doubters wrong. Slowly, not all at once, she accepts that he is not coming. She practises telling Geoff that Danny did not turn up, then walks back to the street, passing her father’s bicycle outside the pub and feeling glad he is not home yet.

11. The Arcade Replay and the Ending

Walking home through the arcade, Sophie pictures Casey outside Royce’s once more. The scene is now told in the present tense, and from the line about his eyes being level with “your own”, it shifts into the second person (“you”). This replay contains details she never told Geoff: his slightly upturned, freckled nose and his green eyes that seem to shimmer and look gentle, almost afraid, like a gazelle’s. His shy smile showing gapped teeth is not new, because she had thought of mentioning his teeth in her first account but chose not to. Once again, neither of them has a pen. Afterwards “you” stand alone where he stood, remembering the great Danny Casey. The story then returns to the third person as Sophie relives last Saturday’s goal in her mind.

Real Meeting or Daydream?

The textbook itself asks whether Sophie really met Danny Casey, but the story gives no definite answer. The best exam approach is to present evidence for both sides.

Exam point: Write both sides briefly, then explain why the uncertainty matters: it shows how strong teenage fantasy can be, blurring the line between truth and imagination for the reader as well as for Sophie.

Characters

Sophie

A schoolgirl who refuses to accept the dull future (the biscuit factory) planned for her. Her dreams grow bigger through the story: a boutique, acting, fashion design, the motorcycle ride and, in one reading, the meeting with Danny Casey. She is not only a dreamer, though. She feels real emotion, as seen in her reaction to her mother’s tired body and her jealousy of Geoff’s private world.

Jansie

Sophie’s classmate and friend, and the practical one of the two. She tells Sophie to be sensible, points out that shop work pays badly and that Sophie’s father would not allow it, and knows they are both headed for the biscuit factory. She is curious by nature (“nosey”), but she proves loyal and promises to keep Sophie’s secret.

Geoff

Sophie’s elder brother, an apprentice mechanic who speaks very little. He doubts her story from start to finish and calls it the most unlikely thing he ever heard. Yet he backs her up in front of their father and never reveals the promised second meeting, which convinces Sophie that he believed in her after all. To Sophie he stands for a wider, unknown world and for freedom.

Sophie’s Father

A tired working man who openly scorns Sophie’s story. Yet he too treasures a small, second-hand link with football fame: he once knew a man who had known Tom Finney. He is a devoted United supporter who goes to the pub after the match. The book does not say that he exaggerates.

Danny Casey

A young, gifted Irish footballer who plays for the club called United. He exists in the story mostly as an idea in other people’s minds: gentle, green-eyed and lonely in Sophie’s version, and a talent who must be protected in her father’s view. The book tells us he is Irish (the “young Irish prodigy”, far from the west of Ireland), but it never names the country where United is based. Casey never speaks for himself outside Sophie’s account and her imagined replay.

Theme, Sub-theme and Message

• Theme: adolescent hero-worship and fantasising.
• Sub-theme: relationships within the family and between friends.
• Skill the chapter tests: inferential comprehension (reading between the lines).

In plain words, a teenage girl in a limited, working-class world escapes into daydreams, and Danny Casey is the biggest of them. The story neither punishes nor exposes her; it leaves fantasy and reality unresolved to the very last line.

Worth noticing: the only time the story actually shows Sophie seeing Casey is at the Saturday match, from near the goal. Every other “meeting” is only described by Sophie herself, first to Geoff and then, in the second person, to herself.

Narrative Technique

Change of Narrative Voice

Most of the story uses the third person (“she”, “he”). During the wait at the canal it moves into Sophie’s own first-person thoughts (“I”). In the arcade replay it shifts to the second person (“you”), and the final paragraph returns to the third person. The NCERT exercises do not name this technique, but noticing it helps answer the question of whether the reader is watching a memory or a daydream.

Possible Symbols (interpretations, not stated in the book)

The only symbol the textbook itself asks about is Geoff and what he represents to Sophie. Readers may also see the motorcycle ride as freedom and escape, the dainty bow on the bent back as beauty set against hardship, and the lonely elm by the canal as a private, secret space.

Quiet Contrast Instead of a Twist

Sophie’s story is never openly contradicted. Instead, small details (no pen, no paper, no proof) slowly weaken it until, in one reading, the arcade replay makes the reader doubt everything that came before.

Language Study from the NCERT Exercises

Metaphorical Expressions

Present Participles

The chapter uses the “-ing” form of a verb on its own, without “is/was/are/were/am”, to show an action happening at the same time as the main action. One sentence does the job of two.

Tip: The book also asks you to find five more such sentences. Look for an “-ing” word that describes what a person is doing at the same moment as the main verb.

Colloquial Words

• Chuffed – very pleased, delighted
• Nosey – too curious about other people’s affairs
• Gawky – awkward, clumsy

Word Bank

• Incongruity – a mismatch between two things, e.g. the dainty bow and the bent back
• Prodigy – a young person with exceptional talent (Danny Casey)
• Solitary elm – a single elm tree standing alone, marking Sophie’s private spot by the canal
• Arcade – a covered walkway with shops on both sides
• Amber glow – warm orange-yellow light, here from the lamp in Geoff’s room
• Wharf – a platform by the water where boats load and unload; its lamps light the canal path
• Pangs of doubt – sudden, sharp feelings of uncertainty
• Earmarked – set aside or marked out for a particular purpose

Check Your Preparation

• Can you tell the events of the story in the right order without looking?
• Can you give evidence for both readings of the ending?
• Can you write separate character sketches of Sophie, Jansie and Geoff?
• Can you state the theme and sub-theme correctly?
• Do you know exactly where the story moves into the second person, and that it ends in the third person?

Quick Revision

• Sophie dreams of owning a boutique, acting or designing fashion, while practical Jansie knows both are destined for the biscuit factory.
• Geoff, Sophie’s silent elder brother, is an apprentice mechanic; Sophie admires him and imagines riding on his motorcycle.
• Sophie tells Geoff she met the Irish footballer Danny Casey in the arcade near Royce’s window and that he promised to meet her again with an autograph.
• Her father dismisses it as a wild story; he himself once knew a man who had known Tom Finney.
• Geoff doubts her but keeps the promised date secret.
• United win 2-0 on Saturday and Casey scores the second goal.
• Jansie learns of the meeting through her brother Frank, who heard it from Geoff.
• Sophie waits alone by the canal under a solitary elm, but Casey does not come.
• The arcade replay uses “you”; the story ends in the third person and never confirms if the meeting was real.
• Theme: adolescent hero-worship and fantasising. Sub-theme: family and friendship relationships.