Who Wins in “The Rocking Horse Winner”?
Many middle-class Americans would agree that there has been a time in their life when they have felt a “grinding sense of shortage of money” when examining their personal finances (Lawrence 1). D.H Lawrence’s short story, “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, was originally published in July 1926, in a magazine called, Harper’s Bazaar. The odd short story includes elements of fables and fantasies presenting morals and somewhat magical powers. Lawrence describes the downfall of an English family who focuses on money and luck rather than love and appreciation. Paul, the only son, searches to find luck to make his mother, Hester, “happy”. With the help of Hester’s brother, Oscar, and the family’s gardener, Bassett,
Hester and Paul discuss luck when Paul is very young, Hester states, “[luck] is what causes you to have money. If you’re lucky, you have money...it’s better to be born lucky than rich. If you’re rich, you may lose your money. But if you’re lucky, you will always get more” (Lawrence 2). Here, Hester is teaching her son to value money more than anything else. She believes that money will bring her contentment. This drives Paul to search for “luck” to help bring his mother to a point where she is satisfied and can freely love her children. Hester is described as “beautiful [woman] who started with all the advantages” which she believes she was once lucky until she got married. (Lawrence 1-2). Paul claims God told him that “[he’s] a lucky person” (Lawrence 3). Hester starts out as a seemingly well-off young woman, but she had no luck. She is resentful to her husband and her family who took her luck away from her. She does not believe Paul’s claims and it angers Paul and makes him want his mother’s attention. Hester’s own beliefs heavily influence her son’s and it leads him to a similar self-destruction that she is experiencing on the
From the title, “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, the reader may expect the story to be about someone who wins a rocking-horse or about someone who rides a rocking-horse and wins. Unfortunately, Paul does not win and tragically loses his life. When Paul wins the money and gives it to his mom, she is unhappy. Lawrence writes, “as [Paul’s] mother read it, her face hardened and became more expressionless” (Lawrence 10). Paul asks his mother if she has received anything nice for her birthday, and she responds, “ ‘quite moderately nice,’ she said, her voice cold and hard and absent “(Lawrence 10). Her response makes the reader question if she is capable of any sort of emotion or compassion. Her son gives her a substantial amount of money and ironically, her response is a cold and silent one. This is an example of verbal and situational irony because this is not how Paul expected the event to happen and when Hester responds, it’s not what she means at all. However, his mother claims to care too much about the races by stating, “ ‘I think you care too much about these races. It’s a bad sign. My family has been gambling family, and you won’t know till you grow up how much damage it has done’”(Lawrence 11). These sentences are loaded with foreshadowing and irony. It is ironic how, despite Paul doing well and making money from the races, his mother does not want him to care so much about it. The foreshadowing is found when she says, “you won’t
Paul, the child, knew that his family wanted money, and he knew that he was lucky, betting on the horses. Paul became partners with the gardener. He picked the horse, and the gardener placed the bet. Paul had started out with five shillings but his winnings kept adding up. When he had made 10,000 pounds he decided to give his mother 1000 pounds a year for five years. He wanted his winnings to be a secret so a lawyer handled the money. Paul saw the envelope from the lawyer and asked his mother if she had received anything good in the mail. She said "Quite moderately nice" (p. 168) in a cold voice. She liked getting the money, but she wasn't happy. She wanted more.
In the beginning of the written story the author reveals Hester to be a cold-hearted mother. "She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them"(75). In public she is thought of as the perfect mother, but in private she and her children know her true feelings. "Everyone else said of her: 'She is such a good mother. She adores her children.' Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes"(75). Heste...
History has a strange way of coming back around when it comes to human civilization. It has been said repeatedly that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. However, just because there is a potential for danger in the future, this does not mean that humanity must ignore what once was. History is normally remembered through what is known as a memorial. When a memorial is put into a physical representation, it is then known as a monument.The need to memorialize events or people is complex; in some cases, monuments honor moments of great achievement, while in other cases, monuments pay homage to deep sacrifice. A monument's size, location, and materials are all considerations in planning and creating a memorial to the past. Examples of such feats are the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and even Mount Rushmore. For the latter of the
A Comparison of the Magic in "The Rocking-Horse Winner" and "A Very Old Man With
The Rocking-Horse Winner is a short story of irony and life lessons. The story starts by telling how the mother is brought up in a privileged home but does not have luck. “She married for love, and the love turned to dust”, and she had three bony children (a boy and two girls) whom she did not love (Lawrence 430). The boy’s attempts to silence the house’s whispers, the boy’s last speech, and the mother’s extreme materialism impart situational and verbal irony, and teaches a valuable life lesson at the same time.
Once he learns that luck brings money, the very component his mother yearns for, he goes on a mission with his trusty steed. He becomes violent hitting his wooden rocking horse with a whip and commands it, "'Now, take me to where there is luck! Now take me!'" (Lawerence 412). His obsession causes him to act out of character because the one items he cherishes has to endure the displaced frustration he has toward Hester. This shows how much he wants his mother to acknowledge his existence in her life. His goal in finding luck is to also find money in anticipation that Hester's search will cease forcing all of her attention on him. Paul not only loses his temperament but his childhood as well. He becomes preoccupied with gambling when it should be superheroes and sports. He rocks on his horse compulsively until he falls ill screaming out the winning horse's name: "'Malabar! It's Malabar!'" (Lawerence 412). As his prediction comes true, Hester collects the prize money, and Paul believes he has obtained the unobtainable. He hunts for her acceptance one last time asking, "'Over eighty thousand pounds! I call that lucky, don't you mother?'" (Lawerence 422). Hester replies, "'No, you never did'" (422), and he dies later that night without ever knowing his worth. She is unable to give him his dying wish of her
He grows up in the family which is haunted by an evil whisper “There must be more money! There must be more money” (Laurence 1). There haunted house with a whisper asking for money symbolized the greed of the mother, who cares for nothing rather than money. She desires to have a luxury life and never expresses her love for the kids. Paul always wants to have his mother’s attention. He wants to be claimed as a lucky man, who can satisfy his mother. He takes the responsibility of a financial provider although it is too much for a little boy to handle it. The luck comes to him. Somehow, he can figure out the winner by riding his horse and earn money from the bet. Even when he brings a lot of money for his mother, he always feels anxiety and scares that this ability will be taken from him. The evil voice keeps whispering in every corner of the house "There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w - there must be more money! - More than ever! More than ever! (Laurence 10) Paul is too young to handle all of these stresses. The materialistic life drives him crazy. It haunts him and forces him to work harder and harder. Daniel P. Watkins analyzes the life of Paul in his journal “Labor and Religion in D. H. Laurence’s The Rocking Horse Winner” that “He is never satisfied with what he produces because it is no way relieve the pressure that his world place on him, and thus his
The story "The Rocking-Horse Winner" written by D. H. Lawrence tells of a young boy named Paul who tries to win his mother's affection by giving her that which she seems to want more than anything else, MONEY. The house in which the family lives is haunted by a voice that speaks the phrase, "There must be more money!" Everyone in the house can hear the voice but nobody ever acknowledges it. Paul and the family gardener, Bassett, begin to talk about horse races one day and they soon begin to bet on them. Paul's uncle, Oscar, learns of this and becomes a partner with Paul and Bassett. They are quite successful in their endeavor, because Paul is the one who chooses the horses that they bet on. They always seem to win. He goes about finding the winner by riding his rocking horse until the name of the winning horse becomes clear in his head. This method has never the team. Paul decides to give his mother, Hester, 5,000 pounds of his winnings, which is to be paid out one thousand pounds at a time on her birthday for the next five years. While Paul was trying to figure out the winner of the Derby, his mother went to check on him because she had heard a strange noise coming from his room. She opened the door and saw Paul rocking his horse like a madman. Paul screamed, "It's Malabar! It's Malabar!" and then collapsed onto the floor. Paul died a few nights later. This is obviously a story about family and the feelings of shame that we acquire from our parents that could have disastrous consequences for the whole family as was the case with Paul's. We will look at Paul's mother's obsession with money, Paul's plan to please his mother, and the price the family paid for wanting more money.
In "The Rocking Horse Winner" D. H. Lawrence tells us about the traumatic downfall of an upper middle class family struggling to maintain appearances through habitual overspending. Both the parents with common jobs and "expensive tastes" (pg.646) exploit all their resources to give their family the best; however, it was only to retain their high status in the society. "The Rocking Horse Winner" depicts a common demon we all face; greed, society's need for more possessions and money often drives people to do drastic things.The magnificently decorated house had always been haunted by the unspoken phrase, "there must be more money" (pg.646). "Nobody said it aloud. Just as no one says: We are breathing! In spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time." (pg.647) "They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shinning modern rocking-horse, behind the smart dolls house, a voice would start whispering: There must be more money!"(pg.646).The house cried with pain as it pitie...
...tunate and wealthy through some type of hardship or quest. “The Rocking-Horse Winner” begins in much of the same way. The family is stricken by debt and the mother has no place in her heart for love. Paul takes it upon himself to go on the quest for luck, and thereby attempting to bring about her love. The supernatural elements, much like Paul's ability to predict a winning horse, is very much like the magic that would be seen in a fairy tale. However, the text plays with these expectations in unexpected ways. On one hand the text does away with the rags-to-riches storyline, a complete reversal of the expected. Sure, his mother gets the money that she has always wanted, but at what price? The life of her only son. Paul gets to tell her, “I am lucky!” (Lawrence 760), but by that point, he dies. The text is a cruel twist on the phrase “Lucky in money, unlucky in love”.
actually consists of in this short story. At the onset of the story, Jackson uses the peaceful setting to confuse the reader as to the violent event that occurs. She continues to obscure what is actually going on in each character’s mind by writing in the third person with an objective view. The rising action that develops throughout the story continues to confuse the reader until which point the shocking ending is revealed. The unexpected harsh stoning of the winner in this short story is not what one expects when they begin to read “The Lottery”.
The second obvious moral to The Rocking Horse Winner is that often one does not realize what they have and how they we feel about it until it is gone. Early on within the story we learned that Paul’s mother had attractive, bonny children. Yet, “when her children were present she always felt the center of heart go hard”. She knew “that there was a place in the center of her heart where she could not feel love for anybody, not even her children”. Later on in the story, the mother goes on to show her emotions and love when she has “seizures of uneasiness” about Paul and finds him fiercely riding his rocking horse into unconsciousness and finally plumaging to his death. When she is presented with losing her child, she realizes what she had, a little too late. (Lawrence p.980, 988)
The Rocking-Horse Winner is a tragic story that demonstrates how materialism is very destructive in people’s lives. D.H. Lawrence uses one of the main characters, Hester, to symbolize how greed heavily affects the idea of materialism. Hester’s need for money develops the idea that happiness and love is destroyed by the need for money. Lawrence uses money in her short story to convey the idea of how neglect from a mother destroys an innocent, young child such as Paul. Lawrence’s symbolism reveals that children like Paul need love and compassion from their elders. Hester, Paul’s rocking horse and the whispering of the house represent greed, selfishness, and love. They also reveal the character’s real feelings and thoughts of neglect, detachment, greed and selfishness.
“The Rocking Horse Winner” is a story that discusses a young boy, named Paul, and his family who feel they never have enough money. The family has insufficient funds, but when Paul provides the mother with money, she only desires further. This constant yearning causes the boy to feel the desperate and the interminable need to provide for his family. He in a sense almost hungers to replace his father and become the sole provider. Through trying to please his mother, the young boy Paul meets his demise. This tragic conclusion illustrates the lengths Paul will go in order to replace his father and become the provider for his mother. This story displays elements of an Oedipus complex, because of Paul’s desires to replace his father and the effects of insatiable greed, eventually resulting in his premature mortality.
Have you ever believed in a supernatural power or something that gives the ability to have an edge over others? In D.H Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner, there is a young boy named Paul that has the ability to be able to see the future somewhat and win bets for a rather sad reason. All the boy wants is for his mother to believe that he is lucky and for her show him love and affection. Sadly, Paul works very hard to attempt to prove to his mother that he is indeed lucky, and to prove to her that their family is not cursed with bad luck. Then sadly, the mother does not give Paul the appreciation he wants until it is far too late and her son dies of exhaustion, all just for his mother to see that he is lucky so she would show him affection. Three messages portrayed in this story are, family, wealth, and luck.