SOURCE: "Critical Analysis of The Rocking-Horse Winner'," in From Fiction to Film: D. H. Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner", Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc., 1974, pp. 52-7.

In the following essay, which was originally published in 1949 and revised in 1962 before being reprinted in From Fiction to Film, the authors outline various elements in the story and argue that it can only be fully appreciated by taking into account the relationship between "character and symbol, theme and plot tension."

["The Rocking-Horse Winner"] could be described, on one level, as a tale of a boy who gave his life in a futile attempt to provide his insatiable mother with enough money. Approached differently, it might be seen as a kind of ghost story in which the main interest lies in the mystery of the unexplained power which enabled the boy to pick the winner in a horse race. Incomplete or distorted analyses of...