Money For Love

In this short story, "The Rocking Horse Winner," there is a little boy competing for his mother's love, and his mother bringing her son to his death with her confusing vocabulary. Paul's mother confuses him with her vocabulary words such as: love, money, lucky, unlucky, and peace of mind. She tells him that luck has to do with everything, and that she was extremely unlucky. Paul's family was not poor, but his mother wanted to

compete with other families by having the best and the most stylish. She complains about not having enough money that the house starts to echo the phrase, "There must be more money!"

This statement caused the children, especially Paul the oldest, feel the need to help find more money. Paul does this by gambling with the gardener at the horse race track. Paul wins a lot of money before any of his family finds out. Success for Paul is getting on the rocking horse and staying on to the point that he dies from nervous exhaustion. His uncle finds out, but he decides to let him continue to gamble to see if he can actually win some money. Paul wants to start giving his mother some of the money on yearly basis, but she ends up wanting it all. Success for his mother is acquiring more wealth to hide her inadequacies. This makes her worse; the more she has, the more she wants.

Paul would ride his imaginary racetrack on a rocking horse and he would return from his trance-like state with the winner's name. This rocking horse happens to be a modern age toy with regular metal springs from back in earlier times, a product of the modern "working man," age given at the most material of holidays-Christmas. The symbol of the horse has traditionally been 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 what causes you to have money. Lucre does mean money." Paul's continual confusion leads him to find his "luck" of knowing the winning horses. Paul is successful at reaching this goal and fulfilling his mother definition of luck. However, he is extremely