When is a Winner Not a Winner?

Paper Summary:

This paper utilizes original thought as well as scholarly criticism to analyze the themes of luck, money and love in the short story "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D. H. Lawrence. Central to the discussion is how the themes become unified to create a symbolic representation of how materialism creates a perverted imitation of life to the extent of actually causing the death of the young protagonist, Paul.

From the Paper:

"In the short story "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D. H. Lawrence, the writer creates a spooky fantasy in which three major themes, luck, money, and love combine to form a bizarre and deadly unity. The boy Paul, intuitively feeling the lack of love in his family, becomes the embodiment of his parents obsessions with money. Riding his toy rocking horse he receives supernatural messages that allow him to pick winners in real horse races. He believes that he thus renews his family's luck, by winning money which he equates on an unconscious level with love. Lawrence uses the unified themes of luck, money and love to create a symbolic representation of life that is not truly lived, but in which concepts of luck, money and love are perverted into an imitation of life, the falseness of which kills the boy Paul. "

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