Money for Love in The Rocking Horse Winner

The Rocking Horse Winner - Money for Love

In this short story, "The Rocking Horse Winner," there is a little boy

competing for his mother's love, and his mother bringing her son to his

death with her confusing vocabulary. Paul's mother confuses him with her

vocabulary words such as: love, money, lucky, unlucky, and peace of mind.

She tells him that luck has to do with everything, and that she was

extremely unlucky. Paul's family were not poor, but his mother wanted to

compete with other families by having the best and the most stylish. She

complains about not having enough money that the house starts to echo the

phrase, "There must be more money!"

This statement caused the children, especially Paul the oldest, feel the

need to help find more money. Paul does this by gambling with the gardener

at the horse race track. Paul wins a lot of money before any of his family

finds out. Success for Paul is getting on the rocking horse and staying on

to the point that he dies from nervous exhaustion. His uncle finds out, but

he decides to let him continue to gamble to see if he can actually win some

money. Paul wants to start giving his mother some of the money on yearly

basis, but she ends up wanting it all. Success for his mother is acquiring

more wealth to hide her inadequacies. This makes her worse; the more she

has, the more she wants.

Paul would ride his imaginary racetrack on a rocking horse and he would

return from his trance-like state with the winner's name. This rocking horse

happens to be a modern age toy with regular metal springs from back in

earlier times, a product of the modern "working man," age given at the most

material of holidays-Christmas. The symbol of the horse has traditionally

been as a transport for the soul and often regarded as an omen of death.

When Paul confused luck with lucre, his mother explained that "luck is what

causes you to have money.lucre does mean money." Paul's continual confusion

leads him to find his "luck" of knowing the winning horses. Paul is

successful at reaching this goal and fulfilling his mother definition of

luck. However, he is extremely unlucky in not receiving his mothers love and

approval, which all children want, need, and deserve. He was never given the