The Rocking Horse winner

THE ROCKING-HORSE WINNER

1.The text under analysis is a short story “The rocking horse winner” by D.H. Lawrence. It belongs to fiction. The genre is a short story because it has an open ending and finished plot.

2.The text belongs to aesthetic sphere of communication. It addresses a wide circle of readers, because a lot of people can find the reflection of their own life in the story.

3.The main functions of the text are emotive, sentimental and dramatic, because this story made readers feel emotions, feelings, the flow of thoughts of the character, and the tragic end of the story. Also, this story allows the readers to get an instructive lesson, that “Money can’t buy happiness”.

4.The type of thinking reflected in the text is figurative, because the text describes the personality of the character, their thoughts and attitude to each other, life, actions and their habits. There are some stylistic devices in this text.

-The third-person narrator of "The Rocking-Horse Winner" uses a simile to describe the house's voice: «So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's mother touched the whole five thousand. Then something curious happened. The voices in the house suddenly went mad, like a chorus of frogs on a spring evening»

-While Hester possesses some motherly intuition, she is unaware of her son's gambling habits until they result in his death at the end of the story. Hester's ignorance in this regard creates moments of dramatic irony, in which the reader knows crucial information about Hester's family that Hester herself does not. Speaking to her son, Hester observes: «My family has been a gambling family, and you won't know till you grow up how much damage it has done. But it has done damage»

-The story contains an interesting extended metaphor comparing materialism to religion and money itself to a kind of deity. This extended metaphor is foundational to the characters' anxieties surrounding money and material possessions.

5.The story is told in third-person omniscient point of view, which allows for readers to understand both the mother's sense of frustration with her own economic situation and the sense of disconnect she feels toward her own children. Additionally, readers are able to understand Paul's desire to please his mother through the omniscient point of view.

6.The story has 4 episodes:

The introduction – Paul’s family lives in a stable state with enough money to fulfill their needs. However, the tension begins when Hester refuses to accept the ordinary way of life. She struggles to get out of this life and live luxuriously like elites. They live in a utilitarian world where everything is measured in material worth. For Paul’s family, this difference between their income and huge expenses makes the situation worse.

Climax— After a huge win, Paul decides to send his mother a significant amount of money as her birthday gift. This should have been a happy occasion for her but seeing this gift increases her greed. She wants to get all the

FALLING ACTION - Paul becomes more anxious at this revelation that his family and house cries for more and more wealth. In this depression, he rides his rocking-horse violently at a huge speed. The reason is that he desires to know about the winning horse in the upcoming memorable event of Derby. He wants to earn a mountain of money through shortcuts within no time.

The Denouement – In the end, he identifies the name of the winning horse that is Malabar. After this, he falls from his rocking horse and has a severe fit of brain fever. Within a few days, he dies but wins the bet and leaves 80,000 pounds for his mother. money, which he has reserved for her birthdays, together.

7.Paragraphs are short, sentences are short too. However, the text is quite long, full of describes the feelings of the characters, their attitude to each other.

8.The number of characters is limited: there are the mother (Hester), Paul, Oscar, Bassett, Hester’s husband.

PAUL

Paul is one of the three children and the only son of Hester, a materialistic woman. He is the protagonist of “The Rocking-Horse Winner”. Paul’s specification is his intense blue eyes that turn his desires to a wild extent. He is a small child but his emotions and desires are big enough to be handled by his physique. For instance, he is aware of the fact that his mother loves herself only. She doesn’t love her children and only yearns for more wealth. Her obsession with financial gains destroys her home. She strongly believes in luck but her idea of luck is the one that yields more wealth.

This idea of luck becomes a reason for his demise. Though, he is small enough for big thoughts and is a boy who needs toys for his Christmas gift. However, he chooses his manhood over childhood. He wants to win his mother and provide her luxuries. In a way, Paul longs for replacing his father to earn his mother’s love instead. For this purpose, he struggles to change his fate and become lucky without waiting for his adult age. He rides his rocking horse at a violent speed. Thus, in halfconsciousness, he predicts future horsing races.

With his efforts, Paul earns a huge sum of money and hands it over to his mother. She, instead of being happy, demands more. This further depresses Paul and he increases his useless toil. In every way, he is insistent upon fulfilling his mother’s wishes to gain attention from her. In the end, he transforms into a supernatural being with burning eyes and inhuman behavior. This state does not support his innocent soul and tender body. Therefore, it takes him away from this mode of being into nothingness.

In the whole story, Paul seems the only character to have true feelings. He cares for his mother and also wants to stop the house from murmuring about the lack of money. He also helps his uncle and the gardener by giving them a partnership in his gambling.

HESTER

Hester is one of the main characters and the protagonist’s mother. She is a selfish woman and craves for a luxurious life despite her middle-class social standing. She looks for the appreciation of those above her status. When she is unable to fulfill her extravagant desires to gain more and more, she becomes agitated.

Likewise, Hester is not a devoted and caring mother. She is only concerned about appearances. Her children recognize her as a “lack”. It means that she only thinks about how others perceive her rather than true feelings. Hester and the children know that she is not a good mother and a devoted wife. However, she does not want the people to perceive her as a failed mom. She is cold and indifferent

towards her children while Paul yearns for her love. For her love, he goes to such extremes that lead to his destruction. We can say that a materialistic mother becomes death for her child.

She does not live in extreme poverty. Her family has an otherwise stable life if she reduces her extravagant spending. She is not willing to give up on her pretentious wealth. However, in the end, Hester’s heart melts for her son but the time is gone.

OSCAR CRESSWELL

Oscar is Paul’s wealthy uncle who lives a luxurious life. He is perhaps an inspiration for Hester also. Due to this materialistic race, she puts her family in trouble. Oscar allegedly cares for Paul and asks him to stop riding his rocking horse. However, he joins him when he comes to know about the seriousness of the matter.

BASSETT

Bassett is the family’s gardener. After the war, he began working for Paul’s family through Uncle Oscar’s reference. Bassett served under Oscar’s command in the battle. He works with Paul and Oscar and arranges gambling bets for him because Paul asks Bassett to work for him. He values Paul and keeps his money safe with him.

9.The literary of the text is realistic, because in some family parents and their children can face with such a problem about indifference to their children.

10.The author presents in the text is not committed and we see it through the eye of the narrator.

11.The general tone of the story is bleak and unhappy. It starts off, from the first paragraph, with a mother who believes she has no luck and finds she can't love her children. It moves from there to the children recognizing that their mother doesn't love them.

12.The leading theme of the text passage is the family should stand above all material goods, because only native people will be ready to help you in a difficult moment.

13.There is 1 symbol in this story: it’s a rocking horse, which symbolize the dangers of chasing wealth and his disdain for conspicuous consumption.

14.The scene is set in in the house where they spend their time. ???

15.There is no flashback in this story. ???

16.The main idea of the text passage is that money and material possessions cannot substitute for love. Caring for loved ones and love is one of the main things that should be present in every family.

17.For me this story is quite interesting and instructive. The ending was very unexpected, because the boy sacrificed himself so much for the sake of his mother's happiness that he died, and the mother did not understand before the incident that it was impossible to throw her anger at her children. In the end, her mania for being rich brought grief to her family.