Going Places by A. R. Barton
Quick answer: Going Places by A. R. Barton, CBSE Class 12 Flamingo chapter 8: Sophie's fantasies, Jansie, Geoff, Danny Casey, the canal, themes, character sketch and exam answers.
A school-leaving girl walks home telling her friend she will own a boutique, or become an actress, or a fashion designer, while both of them know they are headed for the biscuit factory.
A. R. Barton's story of adolescent fantasy closes the prose section of Class 12 Flamingo as chapter 8.
The story in brief
Sophie dreams aloud to Jansie, who is realistic and warns her that such things need money. At home her elder brother Geoff, an apprentice mechanic, keeps a silence she envies and longs to enter. She tells Geoff she met Danny Casey, the young Irish footballer they idolise, in the arcade, and that he promised to meet her. Geoff is doubtful, her father dismissive, and Jansie, when the story spreads, says Casey would never look at Sophie.
Sophie waits by the canal in the evening for Casey. He does not come, and she rehearses the excuses she will make to Geoff. Walking home she replays the fantasy: Casey shy and gentle, Casey scoring as he did on Saturday when the family watched. The story ends in her imagination, where he always arrives.
The people in it
A dreamer and the people who do not believe her.
Themes and meaning
Exam readings include adolescent fantasy against working-class reality, hero worship, and the limits placed on girls' ambitions. The sharper point is that Sophie's fantasies are about Geoff as much as Casey: she invents the meeting to be let into her brother's silence, and the canal vigil is loneliness performed as romance.
The craft: fantasy written as fact
Barton never marks where imagination begins; the meeting with Casey is narrated in the same tone as the kitchen, so the reader must learn to doubt. The turn is the canal, where waiting becomes knowledge. Writers can steal the unmarked shift between what happened and what was wished, a technique that scores on Storytelling in the Writory Short Story Contest when the reader is trusted to notice.
For the exam
Quick material for the Class 12 exam.
What writers can take from this
- Separate what happens from what Sophie imagines in your answers; examiners test that distinction.
- Contrast Sophie and Jansie in one sentence each before discussing dreams.
- Explain Geoff's role: he is the reason for the Casey story as much as its audience.
- Writers, narrate fantasy in the same register as fact and let the reader catch the seam.
- End by returning to the loop rather than breaking it; the refusal to wake her is the point.
Try it yourself
Write a story about a teenager who tells one lie about meeting a famous person, aimed at a family member whose approval they want. Narrate the imagined meeting as plainly as the real scenes, and end with a wait that fails without the character admitting it.
Questions
What is the theme of Going Places?
Adolescent fantasy set against the limits of a working-class life. Sophie dreams of boutiques and a romance with footballer Danny Casey to escape the biscuit factory that awaits her, and the story shows how such dreams comfort and isolate at once.
Did Sophie really meet Danny Casey?
No. The meeting exists only in her imagination; Geoff doubts it, her father dismisses it, and Casey never comes to the canal. Barton narrates the fantasy in the same tone as reality so that readers must judge for themselves.
Why does Sophie like Geoff so much?
He is quiet and grown, apprenticed as a mechanic, and his silence suggests a wider world she wants to enter. Her story about Casey is partly an attempt to be admitted into that world.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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