The Rocking Horse Winner Dramatic Irony Essay

There’s Tragedy in Irony Dramatic and situational irony are extremely effective literary strategies that accentuate the drama of a story. If used correctly, situational irony surprises the audience with an unexpected twist, while dramatic irony creates suspense by offering insight as the narrative progresses that the characters are unaware of. Sigmund Freud developed a complex that is apparent when young children fall in love with the parent of the opposite gender, but view the parent of the same gender as competition. Freud named this complex, the Oedipus complex, after the story of Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles. The Oedipus complex and irony are used harmoniously in D.H. Lawrence’s short story, “The Rocking Horse Winner” and Sophocles’s play, Oedipus Rex, to reinforce the tragedy both main characters experience. Paul’s luck and his mother’s greed are the main focuses of the short story, “The Rocking Horse Winner,” by D.H. Lawrence. Paul’s family was never lucky, which his mother believed was the reason for their haunting poverty, “And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must …show more content…
The story is a journey of a man who murdered his father because he was threatened by him, and ends up falling in love with and marrying his mother. Oedipus described the entire theory in two lines, “With my father’s blood upon me! Never/ To have been the man they call his mother’s husband?” (I.iv 133-134). Oedipus Rex formed the entire concept of Freud’s theory. Oedipus stumbled upon the king, his father, and his first instinct was to kill; a clear example of the subconscious instinct to view the parent of the same sex as a threat in the Oedipus complex. When Oedipus met Jocasta, the queen and his mother, he fell in love and they married quickly. Jocasta was able to speak with authority over him without hesitation, Poor foolish men, what wicked din is