Who Is To Blame For Paul's Death

(Who is to Blame for the Death of Paul in The Rocking-Horse Winner?) In the first half of the 1900’s, Great Britain had a very specified and tight knit upper class. Those who were not upper class tried desperately to imitate those who were, in order to fit in and feel important. It was a priority for the members of the upper class to live in the right place, have the right friends, own the right things, and send their children to the right schools. Many people could not afford these luxuries, although many people tried to at the expense of anything. This is exactly the life of the mother character in D.H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner who tries to live the life she wishes, even at the expense of her own son. Hauntingly, the phrase …show more content…
When Paul asks his mother if luck is money, her response was definitely not the best. She tells him, “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” (The Rocking-Horse Winner). Paul might have taken his mother’s explanation a little too literally. It surely wasn’t her intention to give Paul the wrong idea about luck and money, but she gave him her honest opinion. She told him that luck was the key to making money, instead of telling him hard work, but then again she certainly wouldn’t have worked super hard for money either. Paul, knowing how much his mother needed money and how much he disliked the whispering house, Paul began to bet on horse racing. When he knew what horse was going to win, he knew for sure. His secret was that he rode his rocking horse until he had the definite winner in his mind. I believe that Paul wanted to be so lucky and make money for his family that he overworked himself and ultimately died. If only his mother didn’t give her son horrible advice and just tell him the right way to get money, maybe he wouldn’t have