Even though both authors Hardy and Lawrence are educated they use dialect in their texts. They do this so they can make the story sound real. The cart driver in Tony Kytes would have not been educated, so Hardy needed to express this. It makes them sound more real to the time. The reader can clearly imagine what the characters look like.
In Tickets, Please the long sentences at the beginning of the story mimics the journey and the movement of the tram. The reader feels they are being taken through the journey themselves. We pass through the places such as the ‘Co-op’, the ‘market place’ etc. By naming these, the reader feels what the place looks like.
There is use of commas, colons and semi-colons to break up the passage. The use of ‘wee………hurray’ increases the reader’s concentration. At the start of the story it is all in the present tense. This creates a sense of timelessness because the ‘workmen’s houses’, ‘cinemas’ and ‘fat gas works’ will always be there. The story of the characters is told in the past tense, this gives us a sense of their passing lives.
In Tony Kytes the scene is set in a very different way. It starts off with the narrator’s point of view and the reader immediately feels that the narrator is easy and towards Tony Kytes. A female writer in benefit of the women would have ended the story much more differently by being less easy towards him.
The story in whole is cheerful. The reader is not meant to feel angry towards Tony Kytes. It is supposed to be comical. The reader should treat him like a child and forgive him. Female readers would feel annoyed, whereas the male audience would go along with the writer’s point of view and enjoy the humour.
In Tickets, Please there are metaphors that Lawrence uses, for example he compares the women to ‘reckless sailors’.
The women in Tickets, Please have a bad attitude, unlike the women in Tony Kytes who need to think about their future and not have the ‘live for the day’ attitude.
Throughout the text wartime is mentioned, for example “Outside was the darkness and lawlessness of war-time”
Lawrence compares Annie to a ‘tartar’. A ‘tartar’ is a violent tempered or stubborn person. The only similarity Annie could have had with a ‘tartar’ is that she beat the ‘living daylights’ out of John.
Lawrence also uses many metaphors to describe John Thomas and the women, which are linked with animals, for example the women are ‘predators’ because John Thomas is the ‘prey’
Thomas Hardy uses alliteration when he says John Thomas’s kisses were ‘soft and slow and searching’.
In Tony Kytes Thomas Hardy uses metaphors to describe Milly’s and Tony’s reactions. Milly was crying in ‘watery streams’ and Tony looked like a ‘tree struck by lightning’.
As a reader I preferred Tickets, Please, as there was a reason for sweet revenge. I felt Milly was too peaceful for her own good. Her life is worthless. But while reading the story the reader has to keep reminding themselves that Milly needed to be peaceful so she could get herself a husband because women needed a man to survive in those days. If Milly was living in Annie’s time, then she too may have been violent like Annie. If I were to re-write Tony Kytes. I do not blame the women in Tickets, Please for beating the ‘living daylights’ out of John because it was extremely unfair that John used Annie and all of the other female members at the tram station. He should not be hurting their feelings so the women are not all to blame.
