“The Rocking Horse Winner” is a short story written by D.H Lawrence that follows the short and tragic life of a boy named Paul, who assumes he has amazing luck after realizing he can predict racehorse winners by furiously riding his rocking horse until he reaches a trance-like state. Unfortunately, as his family takes advantage of his gift and starts gaining more money, Paul’s luck begins to kill him. Literally. Throughout the story, there are several themes evident, such as wealth, life, conscious, existence; luck, family, and greed. The conflicts displayed are man vs man, man vs self, and man vs. society. The rocking horse has become an obsession for paul and the potential benefits it would have on his family, ultimately not knowing the actual harm it will cause.
From a young age, Paul has a strange relationship with the rocking horse. This type of relationship happens to be one that most eight or nine-year-olds do not experience until they go through puberty. Despite, the story not directly mentioning it, one can imply that Paul happens to be entangled in deviant behavior. Whereas any regular eight or nine-year-old boy would be outside playing games, Paul yearns for erotic activities. “So he would mount again, and start on his furious ride, hoping at last to get there” (438). Furthermore, he had the tendency of riding his horse in front of his siblings, uncle, and mother and would not stop when they entered the room. This could indicate some type of sexual desire between him and his mother. This would resemble the concept by psychologist Sigmund Freud, which states that young boys are attracted to their mothers and fantasize about replacing their fathers. Paul wants to be able to provide for his family since their father cannot. "I started it for mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering" (442). Paul tries to take over the role of his father, however, he happens to be merely a young boy and unable to fulfill all the duties and properly run the household at such a young, naive age. Hence, his reason to make a deal with the devil. The rocking horse represents the devil. In order for Paul to have luck, he must make a deal with the
However Paul was ill but he rode and rode that rocking wooden horse to his death but not before winning a large sum of money. Paul’s uncle can be heard saying to the mother “you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a
In “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” by D. H. Lawrence, and “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, the two authors illustrate symbols and themes throughout their stories in which one common idea is present: perhaps winning is not always positive.
Published in 1926, The Rocking Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence delineates instances of good fortune and avarice. Moreover, the main character, Paul, is struck with the situation of life. Paul witnesses the financial problems of his parents and comes to the resolution that he needs to take action. In an attempt to attain his goal, Paul turns toward the horse races, along with his childhood memorabilia, the rocking horse. Additionally, D. H. Lawrence provided a variety of symbols, figurative language, and themes that give detailed insights on the sentiment ad instinct within Paul's life.
In all aspects of life, Humans spend an incredible amount of time wondering if their class is high enough and acceptable. We tend to care so much about what others think of us, that we expect so much more from ourselves than what is possible. Which, in short represents that we are not living for ourselves. The lives we were given to enjoy as a whole and embrace. Rather we are living someone else’s life, which locks us in a dark prison of expectations and the key to freedom gets thrown away. Living a life where you care so much about what others think of you is as if we are nothing but sheep being herded to the final slaughterhouse! In “Rocking Horse Winner”, the author D.H. Lawrence paints a portrait of how the mother Hester can never truly be satisfied with what she poseses since she is always worried about the status and ranking of her class. The most important concern to her is looking respectable, presentable, and nice. In addition, in the story “A Goodman Is Hard To Find”, the author Flannery O’Connor paints the same portrait representing how the Grandmother always has to look presentable, and how she always has to look like a lady. Both of these characters in both stories have the same problem in common. They both are haunted by the fact that they
In the The Lottery, Jackson told the story from the point of view of a third person narration; whereas, in the The Rocking-Horse Winner, Lawrence narration is written and seen by several characters within the story. Both authors use social elements to bring the stories together with varies symbolic words that outline the conditions within each siting and the element of an individual death, which involves both characters in a conflict between one’s own passion and one’s responsibility. Both stories have the reader asking the question “what was purpose? To respond, the reader must understand the points of view and minds of each character. For example, one story focuses more on traditional and casual bloodshed; and the other story is more on
In literature, authors have the power and authority to use different settings and literal devices to present their ideas and cases to their readers. In the short story “the rocking-horse winner” and “the lottery” the authors provides two different sets of setting to emphasize the state of being in the story as well as driving their messages across. However, on the other hand, the authors also employ different settings of the short stories to distract the reader and the other to build their stories. Assignment outline Introduction Summary of the short story “The Lottery.” Summary of the short story “The Rocking-Horse Winner “
“The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence is an unpredictable, fairytale-like abbreviate adventure about a mother of three who consistently worries about her banking problems. She has a son who is animated about addition out a band-aid to her predicament. This adventure aswell has an brusque catastrophe that gives off able emotion. Another abbreviate story, alleged “The Lottery”, has the aforementioned comedy of catastrophe the adventure with suspense. Written by Shirley Jackson, this adventure begins with a brilliant day in a village, but miserably ends with the stoning of one of the villagers. “The Rocking-Horse Winner” and “The Lottery” are two amazing belief that accept adverse ironies; however, they alter in accent and style.
The Rocking-Horse Winner, composed by David Herbert Lawrence is an example of inheritance of industrialist society where every family was compelled to acquire more cash in spite of unsuitable results. The author shows his state of mind to the cash overwhelmed society; in his short story he scrutinizes influence of cash and impact of the capitalist society on human connections. The topic of The Rocking-Horse Winner is the ruinous force of greed, which crushes human sentiments, connections, and even lives. Cash is the base of all immoral. The main character of the story, Paul, is
They found that children from higher income families and households were advanced over their peers in both reading and cognitive reasoning skills. When we start to see Paul’s irrational and erratic behavior, specifically rocking violently back and forth on a childhood toy at what I assumed was teenage age, one has to question his cognitive and rationalizing skills. He seems to be out of touch with reality and almost entranced by this rocking horse and its fantasy. The rocking horse in fact was one of those extravagant gifts given to Paul and his sisters at Christmas. It’s ironic to me that this gift ultimately plays a large part in Paul’s unraveling and undoing.
Paul desire his mother’s love more than anything. However he believes he needs to prove he is lucky. He struggles to prove that he is to make his mother happy. Paul wants his mother to love him more than anything. For Paul’s mother money equals luck, and this will gain her love. “There must be more money”(19). He hears these voices throughout the house. They hear these voices when hey are receiving items of joy, especially around Christmas time. The other children can hear the voices and so can the rocking horse Paul received. Even though they can hear the voices they do not say anything. This is due to the fact that every one is used to it so it would be like saying “we are breathing”(20). This led Paul to realizes that there family is in debt and he believes that in order for them to get out of this debt, he has to take action. This shows that he is willing to take the problem into his own hands because he believes that no one else can do anything about
THESIS: The themes of Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery” and D.H. Lawrence’s, “The Rocking-Horse Winner” demonstrate a very powerful and sinister aspect of fallen human nature. The characters in both of these stories are driven to what many would describe as insanity in the pursuit of a passion. Ultimately, these pursuits end in unimaginable tragedy and pain.
Eventually the luck, or in this case, the unluck, had to run out, and it did. Paul's continual confusion leads him to find his "luck" of know the winning horses. Paul is successful at reaching this goal and fulfilling his mother's definition of luck. The whole belief of his mother's was the basis for Paul's confusion. Good luck for Paul would be to see his mother happy. He knew that money was what made her happy. According to
Thesis Statement-The Rocking-Horse Winner” and “The Lottery” delivers two different uses of the conflict, theme, and tone. Though, the authors use some similar approaches to grab the reader’s attention by the things the characters do, say and want. The conflict in the two short stories are diverse in almost every way, yet they both lead to the death of a character in the end. In “The Rocking Horse Winner” the conflict of the story was instantly clear. The struggle relates to the Monetary challenges of the family. The need to gain more money lies at the middle of all the conflict that arises in the story. Paul knows his mother desires more money, which encourages him to try to be “lucky”. Paul can foresee the winning race horse after riding his rocking horse. Which lead to Paul covertly betting on horse races, and his uncle and Basset the gardener teaming up with him. Paul got money for his mother; but in the end, it wasn’t enough. The pressure began to effect Paul, as he is determined to make more money. Paul’s obsession with
The Rocking Horse Winner is the story based on a young child Paul and his greedy mother Hester. The author’s tried to give the message that children require love and compassion. Paul’s rocking horse and the whispering of the house represent his evident need for love. Lawrence uses money to prove that avarice and negligence of a mother can contribute to the deterioration of an innocent, young child. Hester thinks that she has no luck. She also think her husband is the unlucky person and she became unlucky after she got married with her husband. She don’t have any love for her children and husband. The only thing Hester love to embrace is money. She wants plenty of money to fulfil her desire. Paul is a young boy who thinks he has luck. Paul is the child who seeks love and happiness. Paul started to bet on horse race to earn money. At the end of the story Paul become sick and died at last. Before his death he used some money in horse race and win the race. He got plenty of money from this race.
The dramatic short story "The rocking horse winner," is about a young boy who desires to be loved by his mother. The author, D.H. Lawrence develops a theme that states, the desire for money and social status is a destructive force. The story is about a young boy named Paul who tries to win his mothers love by gambling for money. Paul has a supernatural power which he can commute with his rocking horse to find out the winning races. However, in the end Paul tries too hard to win his mothers love and dies. The moral theme is revealed through Paul, who is the protagonist, and his relationships with the characters. The relationships which result in conflict is between Paul's mother and father, between mother and