Tickets, please by D.H.Lawrence

[truth_forest]

Hi everyone,
I have read D.H.Lawrance's Tickets, please but I quite don't undertand it.
Could you help me?
plz make sure that I understand it...
the story is about the man who have many girlfriend...finally all revenge.?
what's ticket?

thank you,

[Virgil]

Any excuse for me to read D.H. Lawrence is a pleasure. I know I've read that story but I don't remember it. I will read it later today and post something on it tonight. If you can wait, hang tight and come back.

[Virgil]

OK I read and enjoyed it. I love reading D.H. Lawrence. First, it is a story of revenge. The impudent "****-of-the-walk" (and each word there is relevant) who seduces all the girls, gets beaten up by those girls at the end. The story is actually quite humorous: he flirts with each girl, plays with their hearts, and then gets trapped, physically beaten to where he's prostate and bleeding, and then he runs off with his tail between his legs. Lawrence subtly alludes in the story to a Greek tragedy (which I can't recall the name) where women are possessed by Dionysian passion and tear apart a man physically. But that's a minor thing. More importantly is the fact that the story is set during the war, WWI, and all the real men have gone off to war or have died in the war. What is left in England are "rash young men, a little crippled" and dandies like John Thomas and women, strong women who are now in some position of power. You must remember that Lawrence is the ultimate anti-feminist. He hated the war for what it did to society, kill good men. He hated the fact that the war inverted positions of power. He found it unnatural that women were running society and what is left of men are cripples and dandies. So this is a story with an element of satire, of inversions of power, and ultimately sterilty of society and of male/female relationships. I hope that helps.

[Petrarch's Love]

Lawrence subtly alludes in the story to a Greek tragedy (which I can't recall the name) where women are possessed by Dionysian passion and tear apart a man physically.

Haven't read the D.H. Lawrence story--sounds interesting--but I wondered if the tragedy alluded to was the story of Orpheus, who was savagely dismembered by the Maenads--women who followed Bachus--because he shunned all women after losing Euridice. I think they tossed his head in the river later but I can't quite remember the significance of that...Milton alludes to it somewhere. Pretty dreadful. :eek2:

[chef]

i haven't read this what is it about?

[Virgil]

Hi Petrarch. I looked it up. It's The Bacchae by Euripides, and it was Dionysious they tore apart, not Orpheus. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bacchae

[Whifflingpin]

Er - Pentheus was torn apart, at the instigation of Dionysus.

In other tales, Dionysus was torn apart just after birth, and reconstituted by his grandmother. (see Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths")

And Petrarch's Love is correct in saying that Orpheus was also, according to the tales,
torn apart by the Maenads, see http://www.pantheon.org/articles/o/orpheus.html

.

[Virgil]

Er - Pentheus was torn apart, at the instigation of Dionysus.

In other tales, Dionysus was torn apart just after birth, and reconstituted by his grandmother. (see Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths")

And Petrarch's Love is correct in saying that Orpheus was also, according to the tales,
torn apart by the Maenads, see http://www.pantheon.org/articles/o/orpheus.html

.
You're absolutely right. Now I remember. It was Pantheus in the Euripides play.

[Petrarch's Love]

My, my those Maenads were certainly busy. :eek2:

[prety zinta]

:yawnb: hello everyone, iam a new member. i will be taking literature this september for my access course to higher education. this will be my first literature class. iam 32, from the uk, though originally iam from africa. thank u all.

[Janine]

Hello everyone! Interesting story and good insights from everyone.

Thanks pretty zinta for suggesting it. I know I read the story years ago and can't clearly recall it, but would definitely like to read it again after such interesting posts.

Virgil, I wonder if we should not consider discussing it in full in the short story thread - maybe next month or sometime in the fall (?)

[Sredni Vashtar]

In answer to the original question, the guy is simply a conductor on a train who would call out 'Tickets, please' for inspection. Something that still goes on today on British transport.

Lawrence's short stories are the best of anyone else's I have read. So vivid and memorable. Here's a man definitely in touch with his feminine side. I must put time aside to read more.

[Janine]

In answer to the original question, the guy is simply a conductor on a train who would call out 'Tickets, please' for inspection. Something that still goes on today on British transport.

Lawrence's short stories are the best of anyone else's I have read. So vivid and memorable. Here's a man definitely in touch with his feminine side. I must put time aside to read more.

Hi Sredni Vashtar, welcome to the forum and if you are inclined now to read more Lawrence short stories, please join in with the Lawrence Short Story thread. The participants quite agree with you that they are some of the finest short stories ever written. So far, in our discussion group, we have featured and discussed such gems as:

Things
The Horse-Dealer's Daughter
The Prussian Officer
The Shades of Spring
The White Stocking (curently in discussion)

We will choose the next story soon - perhaps "Tickets, Please" would be a good one. All of these stories can be found on this site; go to the main Lawrence page; much is offered there as well, including some of his finest novels and poetry. In the fall a few of us plan on reading "Sons and Lovers" and then later near the holiday season - "Lady Chatterly's Lover". Another thread is underway to address his 'Tortoise poems', and another yet to post various poems by the author. Being a very enthusiatic Lawrence fan, I have been in 'seventh heaven' lately. In past months some discussion has been actively taking place on two of Lawrence's novels - "Women in Love" -a stellar discussion group, I might add; and "Sons and Lovers". You can find both threads, if you put them into the top search (pull-down menu bar). Entering "Lawrence" will direct you to the discussions - you might have to go back a few pages, since the novels have become inactive recently and so have the Tortoise poems - short break on last and slow on the others - but threads go on forever, so feel free to add to them.

Hope this has been informative and helpful to you and to the others in this thread as well.

[imadovish]

that was grate from mr. virgil, but anyone here can tell me what lesson does john thomas learn in d. h. lawrence's "tickets, please..."
thank you.

[Ultra Vires]

I am currently comparing Tickets, please by D.H. Lawrence and Here We Are by Dorthy Parker. Opinions on either would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!:)

[Solchu]

Hello everyone! I'm analyzing this story because I have an exam next week.. and one of the question I'll have to answer is whether John Thomas is somehow disabled or not? As he is not at war, we are inclined to believe that he is, but what is wrong with him? My teacher says that we can find the answer in the text, but honestly I cant find it! Is he homesexual? What's the meaning of coddy?

Thanks for your help!!

[Bad Horse]

First, it is a story of revenge.

Your response freaked me out, because I used to use that same avatar and at first I thought I'd written it. :eek:

The story is online here (http://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/shorts/D_H_Lawrence-Tickets_Please.html). There is revenge in the story, but it isn't a story of revenge, and it isn't humorous in the end.

Brooks & Warren, my favorite story dissectors, included an analysis of this story in the third edition of Understanding Fiction (http://amzn.to/1dG1j1N) (which is one of the best books I've ever read on literature, and the one I tell every aspiring writer to read first, before getting bogged down in advice on structure and style in Writer's Digest & co.). They wrote:


The story... succeeds in dramatizing what may be called the "doubleness" of loce--its strange mixture of aggressiveness and passivity, of cruelty and tenderness, of possessiveness and surrender. All the characters in the story experience something of these contradictory feelings, but the author has properly kept th efocus upon one particular character, Annie, who is more deeply involved than the others, and who therefore not only feels the experience more intensely but is also the more intensely subject to the contradictory impulses within the experience.

What is it that Annie wants from the trick to be played on John Thomas? ... Unconsciously Annie must have wanted much more... Certainly she must have wanted the specific confrontation with him... Secretly, perhaps she wanted to hear him name her as his choice--if only to have the chance to tell him she has no interest in him. But it is plain that neither Annie nor the rest of the girls have really thought out just what they expect the prank to accomplish.

... Once they have got into it, their actions are emotional and compulsive, sexual in fact, and sexual in a way that puzzles and even frightens the girls. They have worked themselves in a wild frenzy that they cannot understand and that might conceivably end in extreme violence.... The only satisfactory ending for such a mixture of feelings--and of feelings wakeed to such intensity by the physical struggle--is possession and marriage. [Brooks & Warren wrote this sometime between the 1950s and the 1970s, in a less-open-minded time than when Lawrence wrote the story in 1919.] But this is the solution that the tomboy prank has made impossible. It is as if Annie's revenge has made John Thomas more desirable, and yet the forcing of his admission that, having to choose, we would indeed choose her, has made that choice in fact impossible. The very frustration of the prank she has engineered has revealed to her things about herself that she had not surmised.



You must remember that Lawrence is the ultimate anti-feminist. He hated the war for what it did to society, kill good men. He hated the fact that the war inverted positions of power. He found it unnatural that women were running society and what is left of men are cripples and dandies.

Bernard-Jean Ramadier wrote an interesting analysis (http://jsse.revues.org/532) of "Tickets, Please" that agrees with your statement.