Comparing 'Rocking-Horse Winner And The Neckless'

Comparing “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “The Neckless”
Literature is a very interesting subject. Not only is it interesting to learn, but it addresses human nature and conditions that affects people. It teaches people different lessons of life. Many short stories address characters and themes similar to human nature, for example, the short stories “The Rocking -Horse Winner” written by D.H Lawrence and “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant. These stories have themes that correlate to human nature. According to Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Guy Maupassant, “portrays his characters as unhappy victims of their greed, desire, or vanity, but presents even the most sordid details of their lives without sermonizing”.( “Guy De Maupassant” ). This

This theme is discussed differently in the stories. “In The Necklace” the author expressed the power of love. The love that has no limits and the love that exist in both the difficult times and the easy times between couples. In “The Necklace”, the author tells us how the husband loves his wife. He is troubled every time his wife is sad, to the point that one day he gives up the money that he kept to buy a gun and give it to his wife, so she could buy the dress for the party. The author writes, “He was in despair. He resumes ‘come, let us see, Mathilda. How much would it cost a suitable dress, which you could use on the occasions” (327). This shows how caring and loving this husband is to his wife. In addition, after losing the necklace and spend many years paying the debt, this husband continues loving his wife. In contrast, in “The Rocking Horse Winner”, we are told that Hester, the wife and a mother, does not love her children and family. Hester’s mind is occupied, thinking of the ways of making money. She always blames her husband for being unlucky, as a result her attitude creates a lot of tension in the family. This result in her failure of taking responsibility as a mother. She fails to stand by his son Paul, who starts gambling at a young age. Hester is too busy to notice what is going on in her son’s life. Furthermore, there is also a luck of love from the father’s side. We are never told about the father and his

This theme is expressed in the way that the people in both stories worked so hard for the things that they did not enjoy. Paul in “The Rocking Horse Winner”, spends the entire night riding a horse, while predicting the winning horse. Although Paul keeps on winning, his work is unproductive for him, because he doesn’t use the money that he wins (Watkins). The author mention that Paul keeps the money and give it to his mother. Due to his hardworking, Paul ends up losing his life and his childhood innocence. Meanwhile, in “The Necklace”, Mathilda and her husband work for ten years of hard labor in order to pay for their debt. This family’s hard work is unproductive, because even though they work two jobs day in day night, they never use the money to buy their own personal things. They spend all the money paying for the bills and debts. These stories express how people sometimes work so hard, but not enjoying the money they make because of life circumstances or bad choices. Debts and money desires can cause unproductive