Winner Rocking Horse WinnerThe Rocking Horse Winner – Money for Love In this short story, “The Rocking Horse Winner,” there is a little boycompeting for his mother’s love, and his mother bringing her son to hisdeath with her confusing vocabulary. Paul’s mother confuses him with hervocabulary words such as: love, money, lucky, unlucky, and peace of mind.
She tells him that luck has to do with everything, and that she wasextremely unlucky. Paul’s family were not poor, but his mother wanted tocompete with other families by having the best and the most stylish. Shecomplains about not having enough money that the house starts to echo thephrase, “There must be more money!”This statement caused the children, especially Paul the oldest, feel theneed to help find more money. Paul does this by gambling with the gardenerat the horse race track. Paul wins a lot of money before any of his familyfinds out. Success for Paul is getting on the rocking horse and staying onto the point that he dies from nervous exhaustion. His uncle finds out, buthe decides to let him continue to gamble to see if he can actually win somemoney. Paul wants to start giving his mother some of the money on yearlybasis, but she ends up wanting it all. Success for his mother is acquiringmore wealth to hide her inadequacies. This makes her worse; the more shehas, the more she wants. Paul would ride his imaginary racetrack on a rocking horse and he wouldreturn from his trance-like state with the winner’s name. This rocking horsehappens to be a modern age toy with regular metal springs from back inearlier times, a product of the modern “working man,” age given at the mostmaterial of holidays-Christmas. The symbol of the horse has traditionallybeen as a transport for the soul and often regarded as an omen of death.
When Paul confused luck with lucre, his mother explained that “luck is whatcauses you to have money.lucre does mean money.” Paul’s continual confusionleads him to find his “luck” of knowing the winning horses. Paul issuccessful at reaching this goal and fulfilling his mother definition ofluck. However, he is extremely unlucky in not receiving his mothers love andapproval, which all children want, need, and deserve. He was never given theexperience of contentment, and all children need that feeling in their life.
Luck means gaining something without meaning to or even knowing how toobtain it. Now that Paul’s mother has confused him with the meaning of luck,therefore he believes that luckiness, was richness. So, if you’re lucky youwill have plenty of money. Having good luck for Paul would be to see hismother happy. He knew that money was what made her happy he also knew thathis mother “could feel no love” by looking in her eyes, but he was certainthat winning the money would bring her luck as well as cause her happiness.
His mother’s definition also gave him the idea that if he got money, hismother would love him. This is why being lucky is so important to him. The money he made was proof of his luck that he could show to his mother andearn her love. Paul is really unlucky because he never got what he wanted.
He never received love from his mother, which he should already have had.
Paul, who was just merely a child, lost his life in the struggle for luckand lucre. How unlucky can one person actually be? Power corrupts, andabsolute power corrupts absolutely; actually this could be the moral of thestory because the more money that came in, the greedier she became.
