The Rocking-Horse Winner, D. H. Lawrence | E. San Juan, Jr. (essay date 1970)
E. San Juan, Jr. (essay date 1970)
SOURCE: "Theme Versus Imitation: D. H. Lawrence's 'The Rocking-Horse Winner'," in The D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer, 1970, pp. 136-40.
[Here, San Juan seeks to contradict other critics of "The Rocking-Horse Winner" by stating that Paul was neither corrupted by, nor a victim of, money; instead, San Juan argues that the principle of the story is the change in Paul's personality—Paul's motivation was to please his mother and money is only used as a method to invoke emotions and change.]
One persistent and serious mistake occurring in most formal analyses of fiction is the easy reduction of the narrative to an allegorical statement of ideas presumed to underlie the work, or to a quasi-parabolic projection of values, themes, motives, etc. Fiction thus splits into subject or content and form. Subject, the meaning of the fable, can be extrapolated from the rendered action. Form...
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