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Showing posts with label Prose 03: The Rocking Horse Winner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prose 03: The Rocking Horse Winner. Show all posts
David Herbert Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile which he called his "savage pilgrimage". At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation".
Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. Lawrence is now valued by many as a visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in English literature.
The Rocking Horse Winner: Critical Analysis
In the short story "The Rocking Horse-Winner" by D. H. Lawrence it is illustrated that money cannot buy happiness. The short story displays the way people allow money to control their lives. The passage includes the literary devices; character development, contrast, suspense and dramatic irony. "The Rocking-Horse Winner" is written giving the omniscient point of view. The thoughts and motives of all of the characters are told when D. H. Lawrence finds suitable. The writer of the passage on "The Rocking-Horse Winner" is K. McGuire.
Insight is offered in the passage about the protagonist of the story who is the young boy. Character development takes place in the short passage. "He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way seeking for the clue to "luck". He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it. ...he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space." In these quotes from the passage the character has changed from acting in a childish manner to a franticly riding a rocking-horse, like a madman. Definite development has occurred to the character who is the protagonist because I observed this character has a clearly defined goal, which is to obtain luck.
"When the two girls were playing dolls in the nursery he would sit ... charging madly into space, with a Frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily." This quote epitomizes the concept of contrast. It displays a juxtaposition of emotion because you first see the two girls who symbolize innocence and goodness playing appropriately with their dolls. You are then introduced to the boy who rides a horse (symbol for sex) intensely focused on his quest for luck (symbol in this story for money). The girls are the opposite of the boy and this is immensely entertained for me, the reader.
The Rocking Horse Winner: Preface
In "The Rocking-Horse Winner," a young boy, Paul, perceives that there is never enough money in his family, he sets out to find a way to get money through luck. He discovers that if he rides his rocking-horse fast enough, he will somehow "know" the name of the winning horse in the next race.
He begins to make money and secretly funnel this money to his mother, but the desire for more money only grows more intense instead of going away. He finally rides his rocking-horse so furiously in order to discover the winner of the Derby that he falls into illness and dies, just as the winning horse earns his family an enormous fortune.
The Characters that take place in the story:
- Paul: Boy who knows that his mother does not love him or his sisters even though she outwardly shows affection and treats her children kindly. After Paul receives a rocking horse one Christmas, he rides it often and develops a strange intuitive power that enables him to correctly predict the winners of horses races. At racetracks, he wins thousands of pounds that he sets aside to defray his mother's debts.
The Rocking Horse Winner: Summary
The main theme in the story The Rocking Horse Winner is greed. The mother and father both had very expensive tastes and their children basically resented them for it. There was never enough money and both parents had small incomes. The children were starting to grow up and would have to begin school soon. But all of the family’s money was being wasted on things that were not important. The family believed that their house had become haunted with the unspoken phrase, “There must be more money!” Everyone heard it, but never said or did anything about it. The parents continued to buy unnecessary things. At Christmas time, they heard the phrase when all of the children’s expensive toys filled the house. It was believed it was the toys that haunted the house, since the mother’s greed it what caused her to buy the toys in the first place.
A motif of the Rocking Horse Winner could be luck. The mother led her son to believe that they are an unlucky family. She believes this because they have no fortune and are basically poor. She believes that if you have money, you are lucky. She told her son the cause of their unluckiness is because of his father. Since he has a small income, he was unlucky, and since she married him, it made her unlucky as well. She also told Paul that it is better to be born lucky rather than rich because if you a rich you could lose all of your money, but if you are lucky you will continue to receive money.
A motif of the Rocking Horse Winner could be luck. The mother led her son to believe that they are an unlucky family. She believes this because they have no fortune and are basically poor. She believes that if you have money, you are lucky. She told her son the cause of their unluckiness is because of his father. Since he has a small income, he was unlucky, and since she married him, it made her unlucky as well. She also told Paul that it is better to be born lucky rather than rich because if you a rich you could lose all of your money, but if you are lucky you will continue to receive money.
The Rocking Horse Winner
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody 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.
There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.
Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father went into town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialised. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.
