Comparative - Small Things Like These

Question 1

Decription of the convent

Answer 1

• Powerful-looking place
• ran a training school…for girls, providing them with basic education. They also ran a laundry business.

Question 2

Furlong rescues Sarah from the coal shed and brings her home

Answer 2

• The worst was yet to come, he knew.
• He found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another?
• Never once in his whole and unremarkable life had he known a happiness akin to this
• In his foolish heart he not only hoped but legitimately believed that they would manage

Question 3

Evidence that religion is diminishing at the beginning of the book

Answer 3

Cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary

Question 4

Eileen’s disapproval of Furlong’s generous nature

Answer 4

Have ye change for the collection box? Or has your daddy given it all away?

Question 5

In bed one night Bill tries to explain his feelings of injustice to Eileen after his encounter with the girl in the coal shed

Answer 5

• Well, there’s girls out there that get in trouble, that much you do know
• If you want to get on in life there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on

Question 6

How Mrs Wilson’s money shaped her character

Answer 6

• Few thousand pounds to start up
• didn’t seem to care much for what judgements others passed but carried temperately along with her own life

Question 7

Furlong’s run in with Mother Superior after bringing her the girl he found in the coal shed

Answer 7

• You’ll come in…I’ll have it no other way
• It’s no easy to task to find a place for everyone
• He was, after all, a man amongst
  women here
• poor girl

Question 8

Furlong’s first encounter with the girl in the coal shed

Answer 8

• Just about fit to stand
• That the girl within had been there for longer than the night
• The ordinary part of him wished he’d never come near the place
• fourteen weeks old. They’ve taken him from me now but they might let me feed him again, if he’s here. I don’t know where he is
• Well, there’s girls out there that get in trouble, that much you do know
• If you want to get on in life there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on

Question 9

Mrs Kehoe and Bill discuss the church and it’s power following his run in with the Mother Superior

Answer 9

• They’re all the one. You can’t side against one without damaging your chances with the other
• Surely they’ve only as much power as we give them
• Can’t I count on one hand the number of girls from around here that ever got on well who didn’t walk those halls
• Nuns have a finger in every pie

Question 10

Furlong tells Eileen about his encounter with Mick Sinnott’s son on the road

Answer 10

• foraging for sticks
• Always there’s one that has to pull the short straw
• Some of these bring the hardship on themselves

Question 11

Furlong’s pride and commitments towards his daughters

Answer 11

• felt a deep, private joy that these children were his own
• keep his head down and stay on the right side of people, and to keep providing for his girls
• the only good school in the town

Question 12

Furlong’s day-to-day life

Answer 12

• getting up in the dark and going to the yard, making deliveries, one after another the whole day long,
• keep his head down and stay on the right side of people, and to keep providing for his girls

Question 13

Furlong’s childhood

Answer 13

• The back of his coat covered in spit
• made it clear they’d have no more to do with her
• he’d been jeered and called some ugly names
• fallen pregnant

Question 14

The effects Furlong’s childhood had on him

Answer 14

• had developed good, Protestant habits; was given to rising early and had no taste for drink
• He found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another?

Question 15

Furlong’s first encounter with the laundry girls

Answer 15

• more than a dozen young women and girls, down on their hands and knees… polishing their hearts out in a circle on the floor.
• All I want to do is drown meself

Question 16

New Ross is not an economically prosperous town

Answer 16

The shipyard company had closed and…the big fertiliser factory…had made several redundancies

Question 17

When Furlong can’t sleep he stands by the window and looks out at the street

Answer 17

• a sharp, hot whistle and laughter
• He imagined his girls getting big and growing up, going out into that world of men
• men’s eyes following his girls