Read the short story the Rocking – Horse Winner, using at least three of the before, during and after reading comprehension strategies. Write a paragraph explaining the strategies you used to aid your comprehension while reading the short story.

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Analyze the story “The Rocking – horse Winner” using the literary theory of formalism. Write four paragraphs in which you analyze how four textual elements are used in the story The Rocking Horse Winner. Choose your four textual elements from among these : conflicts, protagonist antagonist, point of view, plot structure, setting, symbols and theme.

D. H. Lawrence wrote the story in omniscient third-person point of view, enabling him to reveal the thoughts of the characters. The Rocking-Horse Winner” is a short story that mingles qualities of the fable, the fantasy, and the fairy tale. The Rocking horse has come to resemble closely folk literature and tells the story of a man who in his dying moments wants to prophesy about the world and not imitate it. The Rocking – horse Winner can be analyzed using the literary theory of formalism. The literary theory of formalism refers to the critical approaches that analyzes, interpret or evaluate the inherent features of a text. This essay seeks to evaluate the inherent elements conflict, protagonist, setting and theme.

D. H. Lawrence wrote the story in omniscient third-person point of view, enabling him to reveal the thoughts of the characters. The Rocking-Horse Winner” is a short story that mingles qualities of the fable, the fantasy, and the fairy tale. Like a fable, it presents a moral (although in an oblique manner and without sermonising). Like a fantasy, it presents chimerical events (the boy’s ability to foretell the winners of horse races, the whispering house). Like a fairy tale, it sets the scene with simple words like those in a Mother Goose story.

Themes >>>>>> Neglect >>>>>> …….In her preoccupation with material things, Hester neglects to provide Paul the love he needs to develop into a normal, mentally stable child. Had she paid more attention to him during his formative years, he would have grown up into a confident young man. But alas, her desire for the best things in life overuled her maternal instincts.

Faulty Sense of Values – This is a major flaw in Hester’s character and results in distancing her from her husband and children as well. Hester’s spending and indebtedness create anxiety that haunts the house and personifies itself by repeatedly whispering the phrase: “There must be more money.”

Setting >>>>>> …….The action takes place in England in the years just after the First World War. The places include a home in an unidentified location in or near London; London’s Richmond Park; a car traveling to a home in Hampshire County, southwest of London; and Lincoln Racecourse in Lincoln, Lincolnshire. The narrator mentions major races in England well known to readers of the story when it first appeared in 1926.

Protagonist >>>>>>>>

In the short story “The Rocking Horse Winner” Paul is the protagonist. He is a juvenile lad who has been in search of his mother’s love and attention. Paul listens to his mother always referring to his father as a loser because he has never made it financially. She believes it being unlucky

She believes it being unlucky. Paul is the protagonist. He struggles to expand capital and accomplishment through luck, but in truth it is hard work.

so paul is the protagonist, who desires his mother’s love and resents his father’s failure. He believes that luck is success, and tries to accomplish his success by expanding his capital by gambling and luck.

Paul comes across a method to traverse his rocking horse until it strikes actual race horses in a race. He commences gambling on the horses and sets away a quantity of cash.

He persists to race but each race exhausts him in the flesh. In an attempt to increase his mother’s love

and care, he keeps on to ride.

Paul goes on trying and fulfilling his mother’s financial desires and wishes until one day it kills him.

The more money he wins the larger the demands of his parents as they increase the monetary level of their lifestyle but still do not have sufficient cash to make ends meet.

The entire tale is in relation to, being lucky. It appeared that to be unbeaten in this civilization you had to have a convinced amount of luck about you to be gifted to make money to stay alive.

Paul appeared to be the foremost to realize it when he asked his mother “why don’t we keep a car of our own”.

The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who “had no luck.” Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; the family’s lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household.

The rocking horse winner is a story who has a gift of knowing the winner horse who would be running the Derby. The boy has a mother who is obsessed with status and money, more because of lack of it in the Paul’s house. One day on on asking his mother about their status, Paul was dissatisfied with his mothers answers. Because of her answers, Paul sets out to prove his brazen assertion true by picking the winner of the horse race. He being successful each time in betting on the winnig horse stsrts to get a lot of money. Only his uncle Oscar and gardner knows about his secret . When his Uncle Oscar asks him about what he wants to do of the money he has won. Paul wanted to give all that money to his Mother thinking that she would be happy and will Love him.