The Rocking-Horse Winner Themes
Family
You know what's scary? Your mom.
No, seriously—mother-son relationships have proved to be a rich source
of horror over the years (Sophocles,
Hamlet, Freud's Oedipal complex, Psycho—do we re...
Wealth
At its core, "The Rocking-Horse Winner" is a story about the
psychological trauma inflicted by the desperate attempt to
keep-up-with-the-Joneses. The mother and father in the story are not wealthy,...
Life, Consciousness, and Existence; Luck
In Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner," everyone and
everything seems to exist in an entirely different psychic wavelength. People
can read each other's minds, toys and houses whisper incessantly...
Gender
The protagonist of "The Rocking-Horse Winner" is a boy who is
barely on the cusp of manhood. Over the course of the story, he transitions
from being under a nanny's care to studying Greek and Latin...