Ying Wang- Midterm Essay
The Analyses of the Writing Techniques in “The Rocking-Horse Winner”
A storyabout a young boy’s chase for luck and love from a middle-class family in a dispassionate world, “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is hailed by some critics as a commentary on money and relationships in a capitalist society, a psychoanalytic exploration of sexuality and the Oedipus complex, or a simple fable of a boy searching for identity and love(Wikipedia).Using a series of writing techniques, including symbolism, irony and repetition, D.H. Lawrence, clearly and actively tells a great short story that successfully demonstrates the theme that a material life can destroy human civilization.
The use of symbolism is one of the author’s out-standing techniques in the fiction. Lawrence would always like to use symbolism in his fiction writing to express aesthetic images and deepen the theme rather than using direct and logical methods (Zhang 49). He is familiar in using natural and real circumstances, such as woods, flowers, horses and tombs,to show the emotional fluctuations and a complex internal world (Wikipedia). In this story, the Rocking-Horse is undoubtedly the most important metaphor which symbolizes people’s endless appetites. As an expensive Christmas gift, the horse illustrates the parents’ vanity of buying things that is beyond their payment capacity. The advent of the horse implies the parents’ desires while it turns be Paul’s tool for helping and satisfying his mother. Having big, wide and glassy-bright eyes, the Rocking-Horse indicates the future luck for the boy. However, in the end, comparing with the winner horse in horse-racing, the Rocking-Horse was shabby with uncanny eyes. The rocking-
horse finally turned out to be a failure, or a symbolism of Paul’s self-destruction.The boy fell down from the Rocking-Horse and died after his mother’s denial of his luck.
In short, this shinning Rocking-Horse symbolizes a dreaming bubble of modern society that material possessions for getting luck and fortunes should be continuously chased. However, that will never be satisfied as the appetite will never stop.
Irony is another significant technique. “The Rocking-Horse Winner” begins with a series of contradictory sentences. The characters lived in a beautiful house with a boy and two girls and they were not poor family. It is easy to imagine that this must be a happy family with a good atmosphere and full of love. But, ironically, this is a family full of indifference, greedy for money and vanity.
A notable part of irony in “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is the description of eyes and mouths to reveal people’s lie and the truth behind. The beautiful words coming from their mouths can never be trusted. At the beginning, people thought Paul’s mother was a good mother and people believed they were living in a happy family. However, the eyes were like a channel or a microscope; only the people themselves knew exactly the truth of their life. Although pretended to be a good mother, Paul’s mother actually was not that kind of person at all.
Another example of irony is that Paul’s big, hot and blue eyes represent beauty, but ugly things are viewed via this pair of eyes. The examples included when he first decided to utilize the horse to find luck, when his uncle first found the value of money from Paul, and when Paul pay for his mother using the money from horse-racing. All the narrations of eyes are bright and full of hopes, which are definitely a good sign. However, all the hopeful words from his eyes ironically show
people’s apathy, and their endless purposes for taking advantages of this innocent boy to achieve their selfish money worship. What Paul urgently wanted wasto ride this Rocking-Horse and to get his luck. Ironically, he sacrificed his own life and tried best to shake his wooden horse, but he could never go any further as it is fixed. He found his way by sending an anonymous letter and providing what he could,wishing to satisfy his mother, but hecould not possibly arouse his mother’s love and her identification with him even in the end. He earned bundlesand the family got more beautiful and luxury goods, but the sound of “need money” turned out to be louder. The more he provided, the more the house and all the people inside wanted.
As a whole, irony helps Lawrence sympathetically reveal modern people’s worship of money and uncover the collapse of the spiritual world when people are driven by money and materials.
Another technique Lawrence used is repetition of words. Especially when the author creates a setting or introduces a character, words are repeated to add emphasis on people’s characters and the surrounding situation.
A good example of this is the repetition of one sentence: “There must be more money” (D.H. Lawrence 851). The opening page tells us that this sound is full of the house, this sound is whispering in children’s daily lives, and this sound is everywhere. The echoing helps create an urgent and tensional atmosphere from the beginningand demonstrate how eagerly the boy wants to change the situation. Along with the plot, this repeated statement occurred repeatedly and even louder when his mother got the first five thousand and purchased a lot. We can hear the sound of meanness and desperationin this repetition. The sound represents the mother’s expanding appetite and appeal for material goods and the boy’s innocence and hopeless desire for love.