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Zaira Akhtar
English 2341
14 February 2011
“The Rocking-Horse Winner” By David Lawrence
In “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by David Herbert Lawrence, a mother of three children
is engulfed by the greed that consumes her and her husband’s life. She and her husband care
nothing other than the want for more money and therefore give their home an overwhelming,
haunting feeling for the need to acquire more money. Among the three children that sense that
feeling for greed emanating from the house, Paul, the eldest son, speaks to his mother concerning
the issues of which money brings only to be told that luck is what causes someone to have
money. Paul, with his rocking horse, soon find their luck in betting on horse races, which
provides a problem in itself that causes Paul’s death at the end of the story. The ironies and
symbols presented in the story lead to the underlying theme that a person may already have an
abundance and still have the want for more and if then it become’s that person’s only ambition
they can have a greater lose than what they intended to exchange for their personal gain.
In “The Rocking Horse Winner” the narrator begins the story by describing Hester, the
mother of the family, to have “married for love”(100). Even though a few lines afterward the
narrator describes Hester to not have had love for her husband or her children, “only she herself
knew that at the center of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for
anybody…she had bonny children, and yet she could not love them”(100). It is ironic that even
a mother of her own children would not feel any love towards them. Even though the “manner”
in which she handled them was “more gentle and anxious for her children” it was “as if she loved
them very much”(100) but instead she did not love them the way a mother would. The dramatic
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irony that is presented in the story is when everyone believes that Hester loves her children,
“everybody else said of her: she is a good mother, (and) she adores her children”(100). This is
obviously mistaken information to the rest of the characters that believe that Hester loves her
children, when it is clearly stated above that she instead does not really feel any love towards
them.
The theme of the story is greed, the idea of always wanting more money and even when
you get more you still want more money because however much you might have, it is never
enough. In “The Rocking Horse Winner” Paul is able to get a large sum of money, which he
plans to give to his mother in segments for five years on her birthday. The mother did not care to
know where the money would come from but only knew that she would have more money on her
birthday. “He knew the lawyer’s letter, as his mother read it, her face hardened and become more
expressionless, then a cold, determined look came on her mouth”(107). She was still dissatisfied
when she received the letter that gave her the news of her newfound money. Instead of being
content with receiving the money in portions she went to ask for all the money to be given to her
at once and afterwards, the house once more had the aura of the want for more money, “the
voices in the house suddenly went mad… and screamed in a sort of ecstasy, there must be more
money!”(107). This is a clear example of the constant reminder that is stressed to the family
about the want for more money.
Another factor that ties with greed is the development of a gambling problem to acquire
large sums of money without working to hard to get it, this is declared when Paul states, “I’m
betting three hundred”(104). Although Paul is still very young, he is beginning to bet in races to
be able to get his mother more money because she is always in need of more money that affects
Paul to want more money. When he is hoping to absolutely know which horse will win the
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derby, he becomes anxious and his mother tells him, “My family has been a gambling family,
and you won’t know till you grow up how much damage it has done”(108). This shows that Paul
is way to young to even know the negative affects gambling can have even though he is already
partaking in the act of gambling to fulfill his mother’s greed.
The theme is also indicated through the use of symbols such as breathing, “in spite of the
fact that breath is coming and going all the time” the same applies to money, money comes and
goes because that is the system society has been based upon. People, intake money, and then
spend money only to continue the process just like with breathing, people intake oxygen and then
release it back into the air. Also, there is a price that comes with trying to gain too much of
something, and that is a price that is given. The price in the story is when the mother loses her
son, “his eyes were like blue stones… his mother sat, feeing her heart had gone, turned actually
into a stone”(109). This is symbolizing the death of Paul and the mother’s response to her son’s
death.
In conclusion, “The Rocking Horse Winner” conveys a theme of greed and loss through
the usage of irony and symbolism. The mother and father shared the common interest of more
money that later caused their son to be on the same quest to get more. Although this leads to
Paul’s death, greed for more money will continue to haunt the family because their will never be
enough of it in their possession.
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Work Cited
DiYanni, Robert. Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 2nd ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.