Thematic Analysis of The Rocki

             Lawrence's "The Rocking- Horse Winner" is a story about luck. It seemed to me that to be successful in this society you have to have money and be lucky is directly related to this. This is shown when the mother when the mother tells Paul "It's what causes you to have money. If you"re lucky you have money. That's why it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you"re rich, you may lose your money. But if you"re lucky, you will always get more money." (647) I think that from this sentence and the rest of the conversation that Paul have with his mother he realizes that to be rich you have to be lucky. Paul doesn't believe that you are born with luck you just have to look hard enough to find it. I think that it is this realization that leads him to ride the rocking horse in that manner that he does.
             One of the reasons he wants to be lucky is to be rich, but not in a selfish way he wants to stop the house whispering "There must be more money! There must be more money!"(646). Another reason is to earn his mother's love. She does not love her children and I think that he children realize this fact, and Paul wants his mother to love him and he thinks that by being lucky she will. Paul did find luck but in a rather unusual way, which was to ride like a mad-man on a rocking horse he received from his parents. And it was this pursuit of like that finally resulted in his death.
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             Paul's actions and the description of his actions are vital to the theme of the story. After he told his mother he was lucky, he went off and went into the nursery were his rocking-horse was a started riding it "with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily."(648) When he went on this rides his eyes had a strange glare in them. It was in these furious rides that Paul would learn the winner of the horse races, and it only happened in these rides that Paul would learn the winner. Then his Uncle Oscar talks to him about horse racing and if he every put any money on the races and he says that he does and that he always wins when he is sure about a horse.