Analysis of the Rocking Horse Winner Essay

A literary analysis of The Rocking Horse Winner by D H Lawrence cannot fail to imply the strong illustration of the toy rocking horse itself. Other strong metaphors let in the race horses and the idea of maneuver in general.. The image of a male child rocking himself to illness and death on a toy horse suggests a powerful and upsetting metaphor for a childs impatient desire and distress, and to understand the metaphor we must look more near at the story itself.In The Rocking-Horse Winner, short story by D H Lawrence, a child gets the feeling that circumstances in his family atomic number 18 deteriorating financially and feels utterly powerless to improve the situation. He sees the bitterness of his finds discontentment and tries to improve her lot, although she seems to pay him little regard. All her assistance seems concentrated on a husband who, despite his efforts, can never provide enough for her insatiable appetite for material things. Horses in general, childs play on their races and in particular, the rocking horse itself become metaphors for the childs ambition, and the goaded quality of his determination to succeed at all costs.The child, Paul, decides that there will never be means to support his family unless he assumes some branch of control himself. Paul decides to resolve the financial crisis through luck, chance, fate and gambling on horses. He thinks that he can divine lurening horses in races by riding his own toy rocking horse. The horse metaphors suggest the themes of ambition in life turning to a blinkered disregard for the costs and consequences in a narrow given area, a drive bordering on obsession. each by luck or by judgement, Paul actually starting times to win money and hopes it will make his stick happy. What he doesnt get to is that she is the sort of person whose appetite will simply grow and whose discontent is of her own making. The need for money just balloons out of control and family members start to put pres sure on him. The strain of duty, loyalty, responsibility, guilt, repression and denial of affection and reenforce becomes so unbearable that he rides his rocking horse so madly that he gets sick and collapses as his chosen horse is about to win a famous race.D H Lawrences own relationship with his mother one of love, but also of control is relevant to the story too. In his drive to succeed, Paul echoes the need of the young Lawrence to please his own mother and of course, highlights another form of ambition, that of her hopes and dreams for a gifted young son in avoiding the pit life and aiming for something arguably higher and more academic. The horse metaphor it seems, has deep roots in Lawrences own childhood.