Who Is The Antagonist In The Rocking Horse Winner?

Published by Clayton Newton on

Hester.
Hester. We list Hester as an antagonist here since it is her coldness and her greedy attitude towards wealth that competes with Paul’s desire for her love. Ultimately, Paul is unable to overcome her coldness and dies.

Who is the protagonist in The Rocking-Horse Winner?

Paul
Paul is the protagonist of the story. He is a small boy with strange blue eyes, and he seems to feel emotions so fiercely that he cannot control them.

What is the conflict in The Rocking-Horse Winner?

Answer and Explanation: In “The Rocking Horse Winner”, the main conflict is between Paul and his mother. Paul is starving for his mother’s love, affection, and recognition. Hester has told him that if he is lucky and attracts money then he will be pleasing to her.

Who is Hester in The Rocking-Horse Winner?

Hester is Paul’s mother, a middle-class woman with two other children as well. She is obsessed with appearances, and particularly with keeping up the appearance of being wealthier than she actually is.

Who is Bassett in The Rocking-Horse Winner?

Bassett is the gardener at Paul’s house, a young man whose foot was wounded in World War I. He is also friends with Oscar Cresswell. Bassett talks with Paul about horse racing and is his partner in his initial betting (before Oscar finds out about it).

What is the theme of The Rocking-Horse Winner?

Greed and Materialism
The plot of “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is fueled by a cycle of approval and greed. Hester sets this cycle in motion by seeking the approval of her neighbors.

Do you sympathize with Paul in The Rocking-Horse Winner Why?

Paul arouses the greatest level of sympathy not only because he lived a difficult life and died as a child, but also because died trying to save his family from an evil manifested by his own mother.

What causes Paul’s death in the rocking horse?

Symbolically, the cause of Paul’s death is obsession, which compels him to devote increasing time to his rocking horse.

What does the ending of The Rocking Horse Winner mean?

The ending is just stone cold. Literally. Hester has never been very affectionate toward Paul, but by the time of his illness, she seems to become even colder and, as Lawrence describes, her heart “turned actually into a stone.”

What happens to Paul at the end in The Rocking Horse Winner ‘?

It is about success, money, love and most importantly, winning. And Paul gets it all, he wins and gets her mother the money through his triumphs in races. And he even found her love as she grew too concerned about her son’s obsession with the races that eventually killed him.

Why is Hester unhappy in the story The Rocking-Horse Winner?

Unhappy with her husband, who can’t provide the luxurious life she desires, Hester tries out various occupations, including a job as an illustrator. The thing is, she isn’t very successful at any of them. Hester may appear to be a devoted mother, but her children know how she chafes at her responsibilities.

Who is Hester and Pearl?

The illegitimate daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Pearl serves as a symbol of her mother’s shame and triumph. At one point the narrator describes Pearl as “the scarlet letter endowed with life.” Like the letter, Pearl is the public consequence of Hester’s very private sin.

What does the rocking horse symbolize?

Summing up the ideas of symbolism regarding the rocking horse, it can be multi-faceted. For example, it can symbolize Paul’s ideal of luck and need for his mother’s love, and it can also symbolize his death and undoing because he puts the need to “get there” on the horse above his own well-being.

Who is Uncle Oscar?

Oscar is Paul’s wealthy, greedy uncle. He likes horse races and uses Paul’s tips to make bets himself. He also encourages Paul to give Hester some of his winnings.

Who becomes Pauls partner in The Rocking-Horse Winner?

Bassett
Bassett: The family gardener and friend. Is the one who gets Paul into horse racing and later becomes “betting partners”.

Who is Bassett and what is his connection to Uncle Oscar?

Bassett is the family’s humble gardener. He got his job through Uncle Oscar, who he served under during the war. Bassett is a working class man with naively religious views—he thinks Paul’s talent for picking winning racehorses is a gift from heaven.

What is the plot of the story The Rocking Horse Winner?

“The Rocking Horse Winner” tells the story of a little boy who seeks to relieve his family’s financial worries by accurately predicting the outcome of horse races, a feat he achieves by riding his toy rocking horse for hours until he reaches a clairvoyant state.

Who is the greedy person in rocking horse winner?

Hester
The plot of “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is fueled by a cycle of approval and greed. Hester sets this cycle in motion by seeking the approval of her neighbors. She does not have enough money to live the lifestyle that they do, but she wants their approval so badly that she becomes greedy for more material wealth.

Is Paul lucky in The Rocking Horse Winner?

Paul gains money not through luck, but only through his hard work and great personal sacrifice—essentially working for his luck—but Lawrence makes it clear that this is not an inspirational tale about the value of hard work, as the effort ends up killing Paul.

What is the moral of the rocking horse?

Given this short summary of the story’s plot, what is the moral of the story? It’s difficult to say for certain, but one likely interpretation of ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ is that if you expend all your energy trying to accrue wealth, it will end up destroying you.

What do Paul’s eyes symbolize in The Rocking-Horse Winner?

“Uncanny” can also refer to something that is supernatural, and the appearance of Paul’s eyes suggests that he has ridden his horse so hard that he has ceased to be human, or at least a normal, healthy one. Eyes are also important communicative tools among the other characters in the story.

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