One of the most famous short stories of the acclaimed English writer D.H. Lawrence is ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’. The story mainly focuses on a mother, and in other words, we can say that she is the most important character and also the driving force of the story. Though in the story we see that the boy Paul is trying to win the gambling on the horse races with his rocking horse, but his motivation was his mother. Actually, according to his mother, one must be lucky to be rich, and their family was not rich enough. There was always a need for money in their family. After the father died the crisis started to become more acute.
The mother always believed that she never had the luck and so she was never been able to be rich. There was a silent need throughout the family. Though to any outsider, the family will look like a perfect British upper-middle-class family with a widow, one boy, and two small girls, but basically, the family was trembling under the eminent poverty they believed coming to the family.
“And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud” (Lawrence, p. 19).
Actually, the mother’s constant craving really affected the young boy, and he always in his subconscious mind started to find luck, because he started to believe that luck will be the ultimate station to happiness and to the money that can bring peace to his dysfunctional family. Throughout the story, there is no mention that the boy was very close with his two younger siblings, which is something really exceptional as young children of the age generally are very close with their siblings. We can attribute it to their mother, actually, it was her constant yearning for money that has changed them, also may be robbed their innocence.
“And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other’s eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard” (Lawrence, p. 22).
Throughout the story, there is no mention that why the boy wanted the money. Actually, the boy had no sense about the money, he only believe that money (and more money) only send them to a utopian land, but he had no idea what would be that utopia.
The boy’s relation to the rocking horse is symbolic in a sense. Here we can derive that maybe he, fortunately, decided some of the winners of the races and as the races gave him a lot of money, he became obsessed with the money. And this obsession with money actually drove him to the verge of madness and subsequent death.
The boy, ultimately become obsessed with money. He started to believe that he can surely make his family rich with the help of his rocking horse. His mother at that time was doing a job, which according to me was a very good sign for her. She was earning money by doing a job, and it might show that her obsession with luck had been diminished.
The family had a tutor and a nurse to look after the children. But it would not be fair if we say that they were responsible for the death of the boy. Actually, the boy was going to find “luck” with his wooden ride, and there was no one who could take him back from his journey: “…’Now!’ he would silently command the snorting steed. Now take me to where there is luck! Now take me” (Lawrence, p. 71).
Actually, the boy wanted to make his mother happy and the boy believed that more money could make her happy. So, he tried to win money and it ultimately broke him down mentally and physically. The death of the boy was unintentional as his mother never forced him to do this, she even did not know about his association with the rocking horse and other people who were involved in the derby. It might happen that if she knew that he was going to be obsessed then she might try to dissuade him. The illness by which ultimately the boy died was probably developed from some intense mental stress on the behalf of the boy. We also cannot blame his uncle and the other persons who were benefited from his predictions. Moreover, they gave him the rightful money and also never blamed him when they lost the gambling.
In the final analysis, we can say that the death of the boy is the culmination of a series of events described in the story. It is not implied in the family but it was the unintentional but the direct result of the boy’s obsession with the word “luck”, which his mother believed makes a person rich and comfortable in all aspects of life.
Works Cited
Lawrence, David H. “The Rocking Horse Winner”. Dowse Fiction. 2005. Web.