irony in the rocking horse winner

Rocking Horse Irony "The Rocking-Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence is a story about a boy named Paul who lives with parents that lack love and are filled with greed. Tormented by a house that whispers to him, Paul dies trying to convince his mother that he is lucky by picking horse race winners while he rides a rocking horse. Paul does not like that his house whispers "there must be more money." He believes …

…been like to be raised in a family struggling to maintain status. The parents are too busy to be bothered with the tedium of raising their own child. The ultimate irony is that Paul's mother, who felt her children were "thrust upon her," is told she is "eighty-odd thousand to the good and a poor devil of a son to the bad." I think she felt she was better off the way things turned out.