Rocking Horse Winner

Affects of the Materialistic Pursuit All the major characters in D. H. Lawrence’s, “The Rocking Horse Winner” revolve around the pursuit of materialistic abundance. In the story a boy, Paul, seems possessed to ride a rocking horse to supernaturally find a winning horse to an actual horse race, until he eventually dies because of it. The definition of materialistic in the American Heritage Dictionary, “The theory or attitude that physical well-being and worldly possessions …

…single character was exempt from the folly of the materialistic pursuit. The stress that materialistic pursuits cause can destroy a family and person. Because of the family’s high regard for money, “they felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighborhood” , but showed obvious signs of distance with each other. For these characters the highest value in life was not life itself, but was the physical possessions that they pursued- even if it meant death.