Kate van den Bosch 11H
Two Sons
Although Tony and Randolph’s characters are almost completely different there are certain similarities in the way that they treat other people. Both of them hurt others without meaning to. Although Randolph effectively murders his mother by stripping her of any reason she had for being and not allowing her to love; he never deliberately upset her. He was just too arrogant and obsessed with his personal status to be able to understand anything else. It is his blindness and stupidity that makes him hurt his mother. He is his own worst enemy.
Although Tony has his problems he would never allow any one least of all his mother to be denied happiness in order to better him self. Tony is also his own worst enemy. He is not particularly bright and he easily becomes enraptured by each girl he meets and completely forgets about all the others. He becomes so convinced that this is the ‘only girl for him’ that he makes all kinds of promises on the spur of the moment in order to keep her sweet. He does not mean to upset any of the girls but as each one gets into his cart he becomes oblivious to all the others. He does however at one point say to Unity “perhaps I shall put a loving question to you after all, instead of Milly.” This is not sincere of Tony as he only said it to make her climb under the tarpaulin in the back of his cart and here he does not get swept up in the heat of the moment as he had before but told an outright lie instead of asking her politely to step out because Milly was coming. In this way he is very different from the outwardly upright and pious Randolph who although he was unforgivably cruel to his mother would never get mixed up with more than one girl.
