Dame_Kathleen_Kenyon

The Rocking-Horse Winner Out of all the stories that I have read so far I must say that “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is the best one that I have read because of the relevance that it has to t he modern day individual. This story is about a family that is struggling to keep up a false image of them that will allow them to be part of the upper class. The truth is however that the father and mother in actuality have very low incomes, so much so that they cannot even afford to own their own car, they have to borrow the uncles’ or otherwise take a taxi. All throughout the story the mother relates the families’ struggles to lack of luck. The boy however who is their son finds himself in a position of luck when he continues to win bets that he places on different horses. The young boy begins to earn more money for his family every time he wins a bet. The secret to his success however is a wooden Rocking-horse that the boy keeps in his room. Whenever he wants to know which horse he should bet on he rides the rocking-horse till he reaches that place in his mind when the name of the horse just comes to him. The boy refers to this moment as getting there. All through the story the boy hears voices in his house saying “There must be more money, there must be more money!” When the boy finally gives his mom a good amount of money he thought that the voices would stop but they grew even louder demanding even more money. The boy’s obsession with the races causes concern to everyone as his family urges him to stop betting but the boy cannot stop till he is on the rocking-horse at the end of the story going so fast that he falls off unconscious and eventually dies. Before the boy dies however he asks his mother “do you think I’m lucky now' I told you I was and then he dies.” This story was told by the point of view of the narrator and it was in my opinion the correct way to go for the simple reason that it made the story flow better. There is a great deal of symbolism in this story which makes it so much more interesting. Everything in the story seems to represent something in the modern day individual. The author in this story is trying to relate to us through the plot that most of us tend to live outside of our means. The parents in the story really cannot afford to live the type of lavish lifestyle that they are trying to live but they continue trying anyway to the point of exhaustion. This is also represented in the boy trying to ride the rocking-horse as hard as he can till he “gets there” or reaches the place that he wants to go. The conflict of the story however, is that the family will never reach that kind of lavish lifestyle without destroying themselves in the process. At the end of the story the boy is trying so hard to ride that rocking-horse as fast as he could that though he makes his family rich he ends up dead! The story ends with a man telling the boy’s father “My God Lester you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good and a poor devil of a son to the bad.” We can gain vastness, riches, and the whole world in our eyes, but are the sacrifices we have to take to get there worth it'