A reading of a classic brusk story

'The Rocking-Horse Winner' is a short story past D. H. Lawrence, which was first published in 1926. It'southward a story about luck, money, and success, and the dangers of chasing after these and investing too much in them. Only how we should analyse and interpret the story remains unclear. In this post we're going to offer some notes towards an analysis of this classic D. H. Lawrence story. You can read 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' here.

In summary, 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' focuses on a young boy, Paul, who wishes to win money for his mother and who manages to do so by riding his rocking-horse until he enters a state of near-frenzy and he manages to 'predict' the name of the equus caballus that will win the next major race. He does this several times, winning ever greater sums of money for his mother, egged on by his Uncle Oscar in whom he confides about the rocking-equus caballus trick. Eventually, all the same, he rides his rocking-horse into such a frenzy that he collapses and, upon hearing news that he has won a big fortune from his latest bet, he dies.

Given this short summary of the story's plot, what is the moral of the story? It'southward difficult to say for certain, but one probable interpretation of 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' is that if yous expend all your energy trying to accrue wealth, it will stop up destroying you. This is, indeed, what it does to Paul: riding his rocking-equus caballus proves very bad for his health.

Merely this is not the only manner in which we might analyse Lawrence'due south brusque story. Is 'The Rocking-Equus caballus Winner' meant to be read as symbolic? Some critics (such every bit Ben Stoltzfus in his book Lacan and Literature: Purloined Pretexts) have noted that Paul, a preadolescent boy, spends a lot of time shut away in his room riding the horse, and that he rides information technology so frenziedly that he ends upwards going into a trance. We might add together that, tellingly, Paul has moved the rocking-horse from the plant nursery into his bedroom, suggesting a desire to upgrade from babyhood into adolescence, which rocking-horse-winner-lawrencewould include a desire for sexual cognition and exploration.

In summary, is the riding of the rocking-equus caballus supposed to exist Freudian sexual lawmaking? D. H. Lawrence was very interested in Sigmund Freud's theories of the unconscious, and he also wrote an essay, 'Pornography and Obscenity', against masturbation.

To translate 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' equally a cautionary tale nearly the dangers of 'self-pollution' seems too reductive, merely it may be that this analysis might exist linked with the interpretation offered above, and that Lawrence is seeking to draw a parallel between sexual drives and the pursuit of wealth.

Here we might mention Freud'south own idea of 'sublimation', whereby the male's Oedipal want for the mother is repressed and this bulldoze has to find an alternative outlet: chasing financial success might be one such 'culling bulldoze'.

'The Rocking-Horse Winner': how should we analyse that title in light of the story that follows? On the one hand it seems to describe the story, and the graphic symbol of Paul, accurately: he uses the rocking-horse to 'predict' the winner of the next large horse race, and ends upwards winning huge sums of money by only betting when he's completely 'certain' that he's got the right winner.

But on the other hand, he ends up existence overcome by his own success and the excitement it generates, and dies. In summary, ultimately he is equally much a 'loser' as a winner – or rather, more a loser than a winner, since the money, and his talent for 'guessing' the correct winner, are no good to him when he'southward dead.

What significance should nosotros requite to the names of the winning horses in Lawrence's story? The starting time such named horse is Sansovino, who really did win the Epsom Derby in 1924. Does Lawrence introduce this name into his story to alloy a degree of realism into his fantastical story?

In the last assay, 'The Rocking-Equus caballus Winner' is a curious alloy of realism with folk-tale elements, given its proffer of Paul'southward supernatural abilities (or those of the rocking-horse) and the narrative patterning of the brusque story. Information technology's ane of D. H. Lawrence'south finest achievements in brusque fiction.

Paradigm: Rocking equus caballus by Clem Rutter, 2014, via Wikimedia Eatables.