A real parent is someone who puts their kids above their own selfish wants and needs. In D.H Lawrence’s short story “ The Rocking Horse Winner” it is about a mother who can not afford her dream lifestyle. Hester, the mother, believes that the main reason why she isn’t living her dream is because her husband is unlucky, therefore, makes her unlucky as well. Hester despises her life so much, that she burdens her children with her desire wants. Her son, Paul, is determined to show his mother that he is lucky and can bring her the happiness that she so desperately craves. “ The Rocking Horse Winner” is a story of great merit; The author, uses theme, characterization, and symbolism to make the story appealing. First, there are several themes in …show more content…
Luck is a major part in the story, that is where he gets the ideal to help his mom out. Paul ask his mother what luck is and what it means to her and she says “ It’s what causes you to have money. If you’re lucky you have money. That’s why it’s better to be born lucky than rich. If you’re rich, you may lose your money. But if you’re lucky, you will always get more money.” ( Lawrence 764) I think that hester is wrong about her theory because luck or born lucky does not necessarily mean that one is going to be rich. Her attitude towards that belief really got inside of Paul's head, to where her tried to be everything that his father was not. That is why Paul is riding the rocking horse so he can bring luck to his family. The Rocking Horse is another significant part of the story, the Rocking horse represents Paul love for the race horses. When Paul is furiously riding the house it describes the anxiety that he is going through to get money for the family. His furious riding is also the future because of his sickness and his unpredictable demise. It is sad to say that Paul only wanted to make his mother happy by bringing her hope, to only at the end become greedy like his mother and die because of
Also, the story ends with some casting of the first stone and Jackson (1948) prefers to leave the gruesome details to the reader’s imagination. Nevertheless, in The Rocking-Horse Winner story, after Paul’s mother learns where her money comes from, the boy claims to be lucky, but sadly he died soon afterward. Oscar tells his sister “My God, Hester, you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner.”
“He heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon. There was a sound of thunder.” (Bradbury 44) This ends the short story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury. “A Sound of Thunder” takes place somewhere in America during the year 2055, a group of hunters then travel back to the prehistoric dinosaur age.
From the beginning, Paul makes it known that he is unhappy with his mediocre life on Cordelia Street. Whenever “he turned into Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above his head.” (Cathers 94) Because of his unhappiness back home, he makes risky decisions such as stealing money from the company he works for and fleeing to New York City. When he arrived in New York, Paul bought himself a gun because he foresaw that he might need “a way out”. When Paul’s affair exploded in the Pittsburgh papers, he showed no regard to his father paying the firm for what he had stolen or that his father set out to go find him.
In the story “A River Runs Through It” Paul was caught in the wrath of alcohol and gambling. Addiction overtakes Paul’s life in “A River Runs Through It” by excessive drinking
Since many people look down upon Paul, he notices facts and clues society does not, however, he fears saying something, in which causes his friend to end up dying Within the story, Paul lives in his own bubble, disconnected from the world and society, so he knows what others do not. It is as if Paul lives in the sun and knowledge of the world, baring that burden while others in society live in darkness with a slight sliver of light from the moon, believing they know the world to its full extent when in reality they are blind and in the dark. This affects Paul since he possesses ideas from another point of view that others have no clue about. This is important because without the knowledge that Paul posses, he would be like his none the wiser parents, which
After her reply, he then told her that he was lucky too. Unknown to his mother, the boy gave this statement because he was secretly gambling on horse races with the aid of the family’s gardener. The gardener and the boy became very successful and became very wealthy. The boy had begun participating in this activity because he had noticed that they family was in need of money. He had noticed that the house was “haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money!
Gravelle 1 Kameron Gravelle Professor Tiffany Intro. To Lit. 13 November 2014 All the Pretty Horses After reading All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, I am surprised at the amount of literary elements that I noticed as I read.
So, Paul is convinced that by playing on his rocking horse will reveal to him the winning horse. The winning horse would be the horse that Paul would bet on and receive a sum of money. Which, he thought would make his mother happy but would only
In the novel Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow tells a complex story where historical figures and fictional characters are woven together to make up the narrative. Evident themes include: race, class, and change and transformation. Throughout Ragtime, there are many characters who are influenced by certain people or encounters. Ragtime not only tells the individual struggles of each character throughout the novel but also shows how each character is affected by another. The different characters in Ragtime represent different responses to change - from encouraging change to responding to it, and from resisting change to accepting it.
Paul cannot control his behavioral outburst, and releases all his rage on the rocking horse. Paul becomes emotionally unstable, and lashes out at his mother when she catches him riding the rocking horse. The reason Paul acts this way is due to his inability to control his hyperactivity. Paul’s mental deformities are confirmation that his mother consumed alcohol while pregnant. Furthermore, Paul’s rocking horse symbolizes his delayed development due to fetal alcohol syndrome.
Lawrence uses symbolism by representing that the greed for money has transformed into insanity and grief. In the text it says, “Paul is urging” the rocking horse (Lawrence 227). This proves that Paul has lost his authority of his greed. If money wasn’t Paul’s obsessive ambition, he wouldn’t feel like he needed permission from an inanimate object to stop. Moreover, the text also states,” There must be more money Oh-h-h; there must be more money.
The only woman in the world who will still cradle you in her arms even if you've stabbed her loving heart is your mother. The short story “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler is about guilt and reveals mother’s feelings towards her children. A loving mother will feel guilty for anything that happens to her children, and even for that how they feel. Mothers is the person who cares the most about her child. The story “Teenage Wasteland” tells about a common situation many families experience: a misunderstood child creates problems to his parents, not by fault, but because he feels unwanted.
Nothing mattered in his town, except for one thing: Carnegie Hall, where he worked as an usher. It is shown through his excitement when he was there. Paul took pride in his job as an usher; he felt a sense of belonging for the firs time in his city. “He carried messages and brought programs as though it were his greatest pleasure in life, and all the people in his section thought him a charming boy, feeling that he remembered and admired them.” (Cather 403) When he first arrived, he seemed always to be in such a rush to get dress.
As we’ve already covered, Paul was tortured by Annie throughout the novel, and although initially had no way to protect himself, he was secretly lifting his typewriter “…like some weird barbell…” (p.217) to gain physical strength. While “…another part of him, more calculating and less cowed, which reminded him that he could not play the part of Scheherazade if he grew frightened and placatory when ever she stormed” (p.64), reminding him to keep his mind strong. Paul did make an attempt to get help when he saw the Police car in Annie’s driveway by throwing an ashtray out the window, where King provided perfect imagery of Paul as the damsel in distress. And although further tortured for his actions, he keep “…thinking: I’m going to kill her” (p.44).
I. Introduction A. Literature Review The Rocking-Horse Winner has been widely read as a Lawrentian fable accounting the “,nemesis of the unlived life” (Martin 65) in a lower middle class family. Debates has been raged over whether this story is of objective impersonality under modernism standard. While Martin highlights the story’s self-consciousness by its technical perfection, Burroughs, leaning towards Leavis, Hough, Gordon and Tate, insisted RHW’s inefficiency for its lack of imagination and failure to present life in a naturalistic objective standard, and indicated that its didactic purpose relying on the boy’s death is an outdated Victorian pathos (Burroughs 323). However, Junkins nosed out Lawrence’s deliberate use of fancy and myth