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3/1/2015
The rocking-horse winner D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is a short, tense story with a morbid ending. Throughout the piece, Lawrence often paints his characters as two-dimensional and unlikeable. Hester is portrayed in the story as hard, cold and lacking the ability to show love to her children. She speaks to the children with a certain bitterness that Lawrence never explains; we do not understand why Hester acts the way that she does, so we do not empathize with her. These characteristics make one to distaste Hester more. With an unlikeable mother and growing tension in the family’s house, it is easy for a reader to feel removed from the text. However, Lawrence skillfully uses contradictions within the personalities of the characters in the story and personifies inanimate objects in the text to keep readers engaged in the story. By subverting our first impressions of almost all the characters and the storylines, Lawrence captivates his audience by keeping us guessing and hoping for a resolution until the last sentence of the story. Although the main narrative of the story follows young Paul through his demise, Lawrence inserts the most contradictions in Hester’s character arc depicting her as a complex and dark woman. These contradictions add layers of complexity to their relationship and keep the reader questioning the direction of the story. Using a decidedly fairytale-like style, Lawrence introduces Hester, describing her as beautiful, cold, materialistic and most damningly, incapable of loving anyone. To the outside world Hester seems to be a loving mother as he can easily deceive the outsider but she and her kids know that she is not a loving mother (Lawrence). With this description, Hester becomes unsympathetic, and later on in the paragraph, we learn that her children could feel her distance, “they read it in each other’s eyes” (Lawrence). These revelations further cement Hester as a reprehensible mother, and an unlikeable person. In the entire short story, Lawrence recapitulates the fact that Hester is not a likable person. Throughout the neighborhood, Hester’s family could not be compared to any other because they were the richest. Although they a good quality life, Lawrence tells us that there was always some kind of anxiety in their house. The anxiety was caused by the need for more money (Lawrence). The story portrays Hester as a person who is never contented with whatever she has and it makes her son Paul to desire to do something that would make his mother proud. These facts make us like the boy for his desire to make his mother proud. The story focuses on the frustrations that Paul felt seeing that his mother was not satisfied with her life and her husband. The desires of Hester to make more money and become richer led her to overthink while trying to think of ways in which she could make some money. The more she failed to secure a way through which she could make money, the more wrinkled she became (Lawrence). Hester always agonized about the future, as she believed that she was not rich enough to put her kid through school. She desires more material things and her worries had an effect on her kids. The main character, Paul, wanted to disconnect himself from his family’s bad luck. Paul’s mother explains to him that luck is what makes people to be rich and this led to Paul becoming interested in gambling and believing that luck is the only thing that makes people rich. What his mother told him, made him to start riding his horse vigorously in an effort to try to get where luck was. The behavior was caused by the boys desire to please his mother and to satisfy his family’s materialistic desires. He started placing bets on the names of the horses that he got after riding his rocking horse. The writer portrays Paul’s family as greedy but it makes the reader want to continue reading to find out if the boy succeeds in the end. The story also tells us about Paul’s adventures in the game of betting on horses. Lawrence describes Paul’s first day at the race meeting by telling us about his appearance. He writes that the boys could be seen by taking a look at his eyes (Lawrence). The description shows that the boy was more excited by the events taking place at the racing event. The boy seems to be more interested in feelings rather than the material things that have stressed his family for years. Even though he was very exciting about the big winnings in the game, he seemed to be excited more by being in the event. His excitement could symbolize the fact the boy was missing a crucial part of family, that is love and having fun together with his family. The family is preoccupied with desires to make money as his parents’ lifestyle is taking a toll on their family’s financial status. For this reason, the boy and his sisters to feel the house whispering to them that there is need for more money (Lawrence). When the boy wins the first ten thousand pounds, he organizes with his uncle to contact a lawyer so that they can make an arrangement on how his mother would be sent a thousand pounds on her birthdays. After Hester received her first letter, she went to negotiate with the lawyer to see if she can be given the entire five thousand as a lump sum (Lawrence). His mother was dissatisfied with the one thousand she received from the lawyer such that she went to visit him for further negotiations. His mother’s behavior made Paul to continue believing that his family was in dire need of money and therefore he continued his gambling activities. His family’s discontentedness makes the reader to have a negative image about them. His uncle enquires to know why the boy wants so much to continue gambling and the boy answers by telling him that he gambles for the sake of Hester. The boy explains to his uncle what his mother had told him about her luck and the entire family’s luck (Lawrence). The boy believed that if he made more money through luck, his family would be in a better place. He believed that the feeling of discontent in his house would soon end if he made more money. His mother had told him that luck is what makes people to have money (Lawrence). He continued to make more money but this was not enough because he continued to feel that his family needs more money than he could make (Lawrence). The coming derby stressed Paul so much because he really desired to win more money. He could not heed the advice given to him by his uncle and his mother opted to send him away in an effort to relieve him of his stress. His mother had shown a high level of greed for money and this was imparted on the boy himself. All this was in an effort to make his mother get to love them more and make her proud of the life she had. His mother agreed to let him stay but on conditions of not engaging in gambling. He had requested basset to place the biggest bet on the horse and he made a lot of money. He died after he had made money for his family. The writer illustrates the effects of not being contented with ones social standing on family and children through the tragic story of Paul. After his death, his family was left evaluating the benefits that they got from the money made by Paul. The story shows Hester as having suffered most yet the reader resents her more because of her behavior. The writer argues that what the boy is put through is more worse (Lawrence). The boy had a very frustrated life trying to make his family happy by making them more money. The writer teaches the reader on the importance of being contented with whatever they have. When the story ends, the reader is left feeling a considerable amount of pity for the boy but also, the reader is left hopeful. The reader can hope that the boy is in a better place where he will no longer exploited.

Works cited
Lawrence, D.H. "The Rocking-Horse Winner--D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)." The Rocking-Horse Winner--D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Web. 1 Mar. 2015. <http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/rockwinr.html>.