D. H. Lawrence's The Rocking-Horse Winner

A Child’s Love
(An analysis of three messages from D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner”)
How much effort does one need to take to feel included, popular, or accepted? Human nature is very interesting when it comes to social problems. Like water, food, shelter, love is something that people rely on in order to survive, and the animal we are we try our best to survive at all costs. But to what extent to we push the boundaries to feel loved or included? For instance, students in high school will buy all of these expensive clothes in order to “fit in” with other students. Worse than that, people could start consuming drugs and alcohol in order to feel included with their peers. Even worse than that, people can start developing eating disorders,

feeling that they are not good enough to be noticed, or feel that they are unimportant in the world. Then, there are those who try to make things better and make life a little easier like parents, children, friends, and even peer people don’t normally talk to. There are remarkable things that these people will do to help others achieve what they want. Things such as money, clothes, food, counseling, or preventing suicide. During the first half of the twentieth century, Britain had a rigid class structure. Its upper classes tried to live at the “right” schools, and have the “right” friends. Author D.H. Lawrence wrote a short story that conveys situations like these called, The Rocking-Horse Winner. In D.H. Lawrence’s short story, The Rocking-Horse Winner, there are three messages, the responsibility of a parent, the greed of an individual, and the love of a child.
The first message in D.H Lawrence’s short story, The Rocking-Horse Winner, is that the responsibility of a parent is sometimes not right. In the story, a young child named Paul, has a mother who wants to maintain upper-class appearances, although her husband has a very small income. Also, the father has been trying to keep up financially by gambling, losing more and more money. At times Paul’s mother would say, “There must be more money! There must be more money”, through the house all day on an everyday basis as if it were a ghost haunting the house. As a married couple, there is a lot of responsibility for maintaining a stable marriage, financial life, and relationship to family. The mother is jeopardizing her family because she is making some poor financial choices that will cause her family to be at risk for poverty. Then, there is the father who is losing more money on gambling, wishing that he will be able to support his family. The only problem with gambling, is that there is no certainty that there is a profit, and it will only make the situation worse. Eventually the things that need to be balanced in a marriage will no longer be an issue because it will lead to divorce. According to many studies, it has shown that 60% of divorces occur due to financial reasons. So it’s both parents that are to blame if anything were to happen, and they are not being responsible for their actions. One main reason that all of this is happening is because of greed.
The second message in D.H.

Lawrence’s short story, The Rocking-Horse Winner, is that greed causes many problems for anybody. For many years greed has been a major issue and if has changed the lives of many people. For instance, the king of England, King George III would tax the colonies more money so that they can have more wealth in his pocket. Well, eventually these colonists revolted causing the Revolutionary War, and not only did it create a new independent country, but many deaths as well. About 8,000 people died, plus an extra 25,000 more that were wounded because of one greedy person. Even in religion, there was a famous expression priests would say, “Greed is the root of all evil.” Thanks to the greed of the mother, there were financial circumstances that caused the father to try to gamble his way into some money so that he may financially support his family. One day Paul was wondering why they don’t have a car of their own, and that they have to use a taxi or borrow another relative’s vehicle. The mother states that his father is clearly not lucky enough, and Paul asks what luck was about. She says, “It’s what causes you to have money. If you’re luck you have money. That’s why it’s better to be born lucky that rich. If you’re rich, you may lose your money. But if you’re lucky, you will always get more money.” Eventually Paul gets her more money, only on her birthday, but she demands for more. Eventually all of the effort of Paul will cause him to break

down.
The third message in D.H. Lawrence’s short story, The Rocking-Horse Winner, is that a loving child will do anything for their parents when they are distressed. Unknowingly, Paul doesn’t realize that his parents, especially his mother, is having the worst issues when it comes to financially supporting the family. All he really knows for sure is that his mother is in distraught about something, and that something has to deal with money. So in any way that he could, Paul is going to do something that will help him please his mother. When his Uncle Oscar came to visit, Uncle Oscar discovered that Paul had a very special gift about predicting the correct winning horse. That is when Paul realized that he could use his special talents to help his mother, and to stop the voices in the house saying, “There must be more money! There must be more money!” Eventually, Paul was able to win enough money so that his mother would be able to receive 1,000 pounds for five years. Although, his mother demanded for all of the money now and she went off to buy more things. Eventually the voices were echoing again, and Paul knew that he had to do this all over again. This time his mother came do discover that Paul goes through a trans-like state to decide the winner, but this time it caused some damage to Paul. After three days of being ill, one of the servants came in saying that the horse Paul picked out had won and that Paul won over 80,000 pounds. Paul then begins ranting and says, “Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother? Did I say Malabar? Do you think I’m lucky, mother? I knew Malabar, didn’t I? Over eighty thousand pounds….” Then he will die later that night. It comes to show that a loving child will do anything for their parents, no matter the consequences.