著者

SHIMIZU Masako

出版者

川崎医療福祉大学

雑誌

Kawasaki journal of medical welfare (ISSN:13415077)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.35-42, 1995

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D.H.Lawrence's The Rocking-Horse Winner(RHW) is a parapsychological story focusing on the relationship between a mother who has always had a grinding sense of a shortage of money, and her son who made 80,000 pounds by betting on horse races, but who, in the end, died insane. Young Paul becomes crazy about betting to stop repeated unspoken voices, saying "There must be more money", echoing in the house. This phrase may be regarded as an effective stylistic index 'repetition', because it describes the mother's inner desire for money.In this thesis, we discuss the unspoken phrases which are a clue to Paul's psychological state as a stylistic feature. As the first part of the story implies, the mother's grudge was caused by a loveless relationship with her husband that turned to an endless lust for money. We conclude that the striking stylistic feature of repetition represents an obsessional effect on Paul by his mother's inner vacancy to produce in him a kind of 'auditory hallucinations'. We also indicate that RHW is worthy of being called a modern parable since Lawrence generalizes the pathological nature of the mammonism of this modern world beyond 1926 when this story was written.