FREE ESSAY ON ROCKING HORSE WINNER

ROCKING HORSE WINNER

The Rocking-Horse Winner
The main themes in " The Rocking-Horse Winner" are the pursuit of love and luck. Both of
the main characters in  The Rocking-Horse Winner, Hester and Paul, are in pursuit of
love. First the mother, Hester married for love, and the love faded, she gained children
from her marriage, but she could not love them. Nowhere in her life does she find love
for anyone but herself. The closest thing to love that comes to her she rejects. That
comes in the form of her young son Paul. Her feelings towards her children, especially,
Paul, is exemplified when her children are around, she always feels the center of her
heart go hard. Everybody thought of her as a great mother who loved her children, but
only she knew that her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love not for
anyone, not even her children who desperately need it. Success for Hester is acquiring
more wealth to hide her inadequacies.
Their family was poor, although they didn't appear to be. The mother spent the money that
they had and more at times, its human nature to want more. She simply was following the
implications of society and have money and live large.
Paul had a conversation with his mother about luck. From this talk he decides that her
love is to be bought with love and luck. To her luck is something that brings money; if
you are lucky you can keep the money. Paul assumed if he would get lucky and give her
money she would become happy. Her happiness would then succeed into love for him, or so
he thought. His mother became greedier than ever, she cared more about money than loving
her son.
Paul accumulates money from horse races. Basset the gardener, Oscar the uncle and Paul
were associated with the betting scheme, yet keeping it unknown to the mother. Paul had
the ability of picking the winning horse at a race if he felt absolutely sure. He would
get on his rocking horse and rock and rock until he got to where he wanted to go, as if
he actually was in the race riding the horse at the racetrack and returns from his
trance-like state after completing the race with the name of the winning horse. 
Nearing to the final derby, Paul said he had to know the winner, so he drove himself hard
till he knew. In a way he was driven to exhaustion by his mother's greed and the
whispering house. His final efforts to conjure up the winning horse made him very ill and
frail. After he was told that his horse had won, he turned to his mother and said "
Mother did I ever tell you? I am luck!" she replied by saying "No, you never did" proving
that she never indeed cared for her children. During the night Paul died not knowing if
his mother loved him then.
Paul had left her eighty thousand pounds that he had won from the final derby, which he
had hoped would strengthen her love for him, but probably not. In my opinion his luck in
the story was actually not luck at all, but a contribution to his mother's bad luck.
Because of his death he looses the one thing that he ever really wanted, love and real
affection. Paul's uncle tells his mother after his death  My God Hester, you're 80-odd
thousand to the good, but a poor devil of a son to the bad meaning that she never
realized how lucky she was to have a son that loved her and cared about her as much as
Paul did. In the end his mother had lost the one thing that had truly loved her, and she
has lost the only source of her true happiness, Paul's money.
Literal criticism
The Rocking-Horse Winner is an anti-materialistic fable because it tells you to not value
money more than you value love or people. The whole story centers around a small boy
trying to win the love and admiration of his mother who only loves money. His
determination leads him to his death and even in his dying words he is trying to prove to
his mother that he is lucky, which to him is synonymous with money. The mother, Hester,
is greedy and lives for the all-mighty dollar. Paul, the boy, wins all this money betting
on the horses to please Hester and when she gets it, it still isn't enough. I guess it
goes to show you, live for money, die for money!