Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. What does Sophie say she will have when she leaves school?
Answer: A boutique.
Q. What does the narrator say Jansie knows both girls are “earmarked” for?
Answer: The biscuit factory.
Q. What is Geoff’s occupation?
Answer: An apprentice mechanic, three years out of school.
Q. Where does Sophie say she first met Danny Casey?
Answer: In the arcade, near Royce’s shop window.
Q. Which real footballer does Sophie’s father claim a distant connection to?
Answer: Tom Finney, through a man he once knew who had known Finney.
Q. What was the result of the Saturday match?
Answer: United won 2-0, with Danny Casey scoring the second goal.
Q. Who tells Jansie about Sophie’s meeting with Danny Casey?
Answer: Jansie’s own “our Frank,” who had heard it from Geoff.
Q. Where does Sophie wait for Danny Casey in the evening?
Answer: On a wooden bench under a solitary elm by the canal.
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Why does Jansie discourage Sophie from dreaming of a boutique?
Answer: Jansie is practical: she says a boutique “takes money”, that shop work pays badly, and that Sophie’s father would never allow it; “you really should be sensible.” The narrator adds that Jansie, “knowing they were both earmarked for the biscuit factory, became melancholy. She wished Sophie wouldn’t say these things.”
Q. What does the image of the “delicate bow” and the “crooked back” suggest about Sophie’s mother?
Answer: Sophie, watching her mother’s back “stooped over the sink”, wonders “at the incongruity of the delicate bow which fastened her apron strings. The delicate-seeming bow and the crooked back.” The contrast is between a small, pretty detail and a body worn down by work at the sink, and Sophie, watching, feels “a tightening in her throat.”
Q. Why is Sophie both fascinated and jealous of Geoff’s silence?
Answer: Geoff says almost nothing voluntarily, and this makes Sophie imagine he has a whole unknown world of places and people that she has never been admitted into. She is jealous precisely because his silence hides something exciting from her, which fuels her habit of filling gaps with her own fantasy.
Q. How does Sophie describe Danny Casey’s physical appearance when Geoff first presses her for detail?
Answer: She says he has “green eyes,” “gentle eyes,” and that he is “not so tall as you’d think.” She considers mentioning his teeth but decides against it, a small realistic detail suggesting she is being selective in what she reveals.
Q. Why does Sophie’s father dismiss her story as “another of your wild stories”?
Answer: He is a sceptical, tired man who has already judged Sophie as prone to exaggeration (“She thinks money grows on trees” is Derek’s version of the same idea). Her claim to have met and spoken with a famous footballer, and that Casey is “going to buy a shop,” strikes him as simply unbelievable coming from her.
Q. What does Geoff keep back when he tells Frank about Sophie meeting Casey, and why does this matter to Sophie?
Answer: Geoff does not reveal “the date bit”, the part about Casey promising to meet Sophie again the following week. This matters to Sophie because it shows that, whatever his doubts, Geoff has not let her down: “So Geoff hadn’t let her down after all. He believed in her after all.”
Q. How does Sophie feel while waiting at the canal, according to her own interior monologue?
Answer: She swings between imagining Casey’s arrival and imagining that he will not come, feeling “pangs of doubt stirring inside me.” As time passes, resignation sets in gradually (“Resignation was no sudden thing”), and she feels despondent at the thought that she will never be able to prove her doubters wrong.
Q. What new details appear in the final arcade replay that were never mentioned in Sophie’s earlier account to Geoff?
Answer: The replay adds physical detail she never gave Geoff: Casey’s eyes are “on the same level as your own,” his nose is “freckled and turns upwards slightly,” and his eyes “seem to shimmer” when he looks straight at “you”; they “seem gentle, almost afraid. Like a gazelle’s.” The one exception is his “teeth with gaps between”: Sophie had already thought of mentioning his teeth at the first telling but “decided against it”, so it is a withheld detail, not a genuinely new one.
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. What socio-economic background did Sophie belong to? What are the indicators of her family’s financial status?
Answer: Sophie belongs to an ordinary, working-class family with limited means. The indicators include: her father comes home exhausted and “grimy” from the day’s work (the book does not name his job) and eats a simple meal (shepherd’s pie); Sophie and Jansie are “earmarked for the biscuit factory”; the family’s small room is “steamy from the stove and cluttered” with dirty washing piled up; her father says that if she ever came into money she should buy them “a blessed decent house to live in”; and after the match he goes to the pub to celebrate. Sophie’s dreams of a boutique or an acting career stand out sharply against this ordinary, modest reality.
Q. Sophie and Jansie were classmates and friends. What were the differences between them that show up in the story?
Answer: Sophie is imaginative, restless and unwilling to accept an ordinary future: she keeps inventing bigger and more glamorous plans, from a boutique to acting to fashion design, and eventually to her elaborate story about Danny Casey. Jansie is realistic and practical: she points out that a boutique “takes money,” tells Sophie she “really should be sensible”, and, knowing they are both “earmarked for the biscuit factory”, becomes melancholy and wishes Sophie wouldn’t say these things. Even in friendship, Jansie is more grounded, being naturally “nosey” but also genuinely loyal, promising to keep Sophie’s secret once she hears a version of it.
Q. How would you describe the character and temperament of Sophie’s father?
Answer: Sophie’s father is a tired, hard-working man with little patience for fantasy. He comes home exhausted, goes to watch United every Saturday, and goes to the pub to celebrate a win. He is quick to disbelieve Sophie, showing “disdain” at her story and calling it “another of your wild stories.” Yet he is not entirely without his own small piece of borrowed football glory, having once known a man who knew Tom Finney, offered “reverently” to the television, which suggests that even he takes some borrowed pride in football greatness (the book does not say he exaggerates). He is also cautious about Casey’s future, worrying about “a lot of distractions for a youngster in the game.”
Q. Why did Sophie like her brother Geoff more than any other person? From her perspective, what did he symbolise?
Answer: Sophie is drawn to Geoff’s silence and reserve, which make her imagine he has access to an unknown, more exciting world of places and people she has never been let into. Unlike her father, who dismisses her outright, Geoff at least listens, keeps her secret, and defends her, even while doubting her. For Sophie, Geoff symbolises escape and freedom: her clearest fantasy in the whole story is riding behind him on his motorcycle to unknown places, dressed in a yellow dress, greeted by applause, a vision that has nothing to do with Danny Casey and shows how central Geoff is to her imagined future.
Q. Trace the sequence of events from Sophie’s first mention of Danny Casey to the family watching him play on Saturday.
Answer: Sophie first tells Geoff, “I met Danny Casey,” while he is working on his motorcycle; he is disbelieving at first. That same evening, Geoff mentions it in front of their father, who is openly disdainful. Later, in Geoff’s bedroom, Sophie gives her full, detailed account: the meeting near Royce’s window, the failed attempt at an autograph, and Casey’s promise to meet her again the following week. On Saturday, Sophie, her father, little Derek and Geoff make their usual “weekly pilgrimage” to watch United, where Casey scores a brilliant second goal and the team wins 2-0, leaving Sophie glowing with pride.
Q. Explain how the story leaves it unclear whether Sophie really met Danny Casey, citing evidence from the text.
Answer: The story never states outright that Sophie invented the meeting, but several details point that way: the arcade replay near the end is introduced as “she pictured him again,” the language of imagining rather than remembering; the narration shifts into the second person (“you”) only for this replay (“His eyes are on the same level as your own”), as though Sophie is watching her own fantasy from outside; and new physical details about Casey (his exact eye level, his freckled nose) appear only in this private replay, never in her earlier account to Geoff. At the same time, nothing in the text flatly contradicts her, and even sceptical Geoff never proves her wrong; the story then closes in the third person on Saturday’s goal. Whether the ambiguity is deliberate is a reading the text supports rather than a stated authorial choice: the book describes its theme as “adolescent fantasising and hero worship”, and the story never confirms what is real.
Q. What role does Jansie play in the story, and how does her attitude differ from Sophie’s?
Answer: Jansie is Sophie’s classmate and friend, and acts as the story’s voice of realism against Sophie’s fantasy. At the start, she discourages Sophie’s boutique dream (“you really should be sensible”), knowing they are both “earmarked for the biscuit factory”. Later, she is the one who confronts Sophie about the Danny Casey story, having heard a version of it through her own “our Frank.” Even though she is naturally “nosey,” she is loyal once she hears Sophie’s account, promising to keep the secret. Her attitude throughout is grounded and practical, in direct contrast to Sophie’s habit of escaping into ever-larger daydreams.
Q. Discuss the significance of the motorcycle fantasy Sophie has about riding behind Geoff.
Answer: This fantasy, imagining herself in a yellow dress riding behind Geoff in his “new, shining black leathers,” with “the sound of applause as the world rose to greet them,” is significant because it has nothing to do with Danny Casey at all. It shows that Sophie’s habit of escaping into imagined glamour already exists before Casey ever enters the story, built instead around her own brother and his unknown, exciting world. One reading is that this makes the Danny Casey story not an isolated lie but the largest, most developed version of a fantasising habit Sophie already has, which is central to the book’s own stated theme of “adolescent fantasising.”
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. “Adolescent hero-worship and fantasising” is the book’s own stated theme of Going Places. Discuss how this theme is developed through Sophie’s character and actions across the story.
Answer: The theme is built up in layers rather than introduced all at once. It begins with Sophie’s ordinary teenage daydreams about her future career, a boutique, an actress, a fashion designer, set against Jansie’s knowledge that they are both “earmarked for the biscuit factory”. It deepens with her fantasy of riding behind Geoff on his motorcycle, which shows that escaping into imagined glamour is already a habit of hers, independent of any football connection. The theme reaches its fullest form in her account of meeting Danny Casey, a footballer she idolises from a distance, whom she turns into a personal acquaintance who talks with her and promises her a second meeting. The story’s structure supports this reading: her account to Geoff is followed by an arcade replay, told in the second person, that adds sensory details never mentioned before, before the story closes on a third-person recollection of Casey’s goal (“And she saw it all again, last Saturday”). Without ever confirming what is real, the story makes the reader share the uncertainty that surrounds adolescent hero-worship: whether it is remembered admiration or invented closeness, the feeling itself is real to the person having it.
Q. Discuss the narrative technique used in the story’s ending, explaining how the shift from third person to first person to second person affects the reader’s understanding of what is real and what is imagined.
Answer: Most of the story is told in the third person (“she,” “he”), keeping the reader at the normal narrative distance of an observer following Sophie’s actions. This distance narrows at the canal, where the story briefly shifts into Sophie’s own first-person interior monologue (“I feel the pangs of doubt stirring inside me”), letting the reader inside her private thoughts as she waits and gradually accepts that Casey will not come. The most striking shift comes near the end, when the story moves into the second person (“you”) for the arcade replay: “His eyes are on the same level as your own… And you look away.” The story then closes in the third person, “And she saw it all again, last Saturday,” replaying Casey’s goal rather than the arcade. This is a technique of self-distancing: by addressing the scene as “you” rather than “I” or “she,” the narration suggests Sophie is watching her own memory or daydream as though it belongs to someone else, exactly the kind of distancing a person uses when replaying a story they are not fully certain of. Combined with the earlier phrase “she pictured him again,” this shift is the strongest clue in the whole story that the meeting may be an elaborated fantasy rather than a plain memory. The technique works precisely because it never resolves the question outright: it leaves the reader holding the same doubt that Geoff, the father and Jansie hold throughout, which fits the story’s theme of adolescent fantasising.
Q. Write a character sketch of Sophie, bringing out both her imaginative nature and the real emotional life the story gives her.
Answer: Sophie is a schoolgirl close to leaving school, and the story’s central imaginative force. She refuses to accept the ordinary future, the biscuit factory, that is already laid out for her, and instead keeps inventing bigger futures for herself: boutique owner, actress, fashion designer, and finally a private acquaintance with the footballer Danny Casey. Her daydreams escalate across the story, culminating in the arcade replay near the end, told in the second person with new sensory details that were never in her earlier account. Yet Sophie is not simply a dreamer detached from reality. She feels genuine emotion: a “tightening in her throat” watching her mother’s worn-down life, jealousy of Geoff’s private world, relief that he has protected her secret, and real despondency waiting alone at the canal for a meeting that may never have been promised at all. This mixture, an active fantasy life built on top of real feeling and a real, limited home life, is what makes Sophie more than a simple liar or a simple dreamer: she is a believable portrait of adolescent hero-worship, using imagination as a way of coping with an ordinary, constrained life.
Q. “It is natural for teenagers to have unrealistic dreams.” Discuss the benefits and disadvantages of such fantasising, with reference to Sophie’s own dreams in the story.
Answer: Sophie’s dreams, of a boutique, an acting career, and finally her elaborate story about Danny Casey, show both sides of adolescent fantasising that this question, taken directly from the book’s own “Talking about the text” section, asks students to weigh. On the benefit side, fantasising gives Sophie a way to cope with a limited, working-class future she has not chosen and cannot yet change: it keeps hope alive, gives her something to look forward to, and, in the case of her Danny Casey story, gives her a private source of pride and importance she does not otherwise have at home. It also costs her very little in the story itself; nobody is harmed by her dreaming about a boutique. On the disadvantage side, fantasising can isolate a person from those closest to them: Sophie is anxious throughout about being found out, afraid of her father, careful about what she tells Jansie, and ultimately left alone and disappointed at the canal, waiting for a meeting that may never have been real. Taken to Sophie’s extreme, an unrealistic dream that is never tested against reality can leave a person unable to distinguish, even to themselves, between what actually happened and what they wished had happened, which is exactly the uncertainty the story’s ending leaves unresolved. A balanced answer should conclude that fantasising is a normal and even useful part of growing up in moderation, but, in one reading, the story warns against letting it replace, rather than support, a person’s real relationships and their own sense of what is true.
5 Case Studies
(A) 1 mark According to the passage, who spoke first when Sophie met Danny Casey?
Answer: Sophie herself: “it was me spoke first.”
(B) 2 marks According to the passage, how did Sophie know that the person she met was really Danny Casey?
Answer: She says she recognised his accent, “like when they interviewed him on the television,” and this is how she knew it must be him.
(C) 3 marks Based on the passage, explain why Sophie says Casey “seemed lonely,” and what this detail adds to her account.
Answer: She reasons that he seems lonely because “it’s a long way from the west of Ireland,” his home. This detail adds warmth and plausibility to her account: it gives Casey an inner life and a personal reason to want to talk to a stranger, making the whole exchange, and the promised second meeting, feel more believable and human rather than simply a starstruck sighting.
(A) 1 mark In this passage, from which line is the scene narrated in the second person?
Answer: From “His eyes are on the same level as your own.” The opening lines (“He turns, reddening slightly”) are still in the third person.
(B) 2 marks According to the passage, how are Casey’s eyes described?
Answer: They are green; when he looks straight at “you” they “seem to shimmer”, and they “seem gentle, almost afraid. Like a gazelle’s.”
(C) 3 marks Based on this passage and the story as a whole, explain why narrating this scene in the second person is significant for understanding the story’s ending.
Answer: The shift to “you” removes the usual distance between narrator and character, making it read as though Sophie is stepping outside herself to watch her own memory, or fantasy, play out. Combined with the earlier line “she pictured him again,” it is the strongest textual clue that this vivid, detailed meeting may be an elaborated daydream rather than a plain memory, leaving the reader, like Sophie’s own family, unable to be fully certain whether it ever really happened.