Lesson 1

1 a) I used the before reading strategy of understanding what my purpose was of reading the text. It was to understand the text fully and apply the reading strategies. During reading the story, The Rocking Horse Winner, I used the strategies of words in bold and italics. The son in the story says “I am lucky”. I understood that the boy was trying to tell his mother that he really is lucky even though she believed herself and her family was very unlucky. I also made connections while reading. The story reminded me of how people think money will buy happiness, and the only way they can be happy is if they’re wealthy. After reading I had to understand what the main message of the story was. Money and luck isn’t everything and if that’s what you focus on than you will miss out on what’s important in life. The mother did not show her children affection, and when the son won her money and created his own luck it helped, but in the end the mother lost her son.
b) Analyzing the story using the literary theory of formalism the first textual element I used was conflict. I found two conflicts in the story. First was person vs. person involving the mother and her three children. The mother shows no affection towards her children and from what I understood in the story she does not know how to show affection towards them. Second conflict is person vs. self. The mother has an internal conflict with herself. She’s upset that she’s unlucky and says she’s the poor one in the family compared to her brother.
Next I used the protagonist. The most important person in the story is Paul, the woman’s son. I think he is the protagonist because he wants very badly for his mother to be happy and wants her to know he is lucky. He also wants to his mother to share his luck. He won money to give to her.
I also looked at point of view. The story is told in third person to show all sides of the story. Having the story told in third person as well as provides distance between the reader and events in the story. The Rocking-horse Winner never says who narrates exactly but they are not a character in the story.
Lastly I used symbols and theme. The rocking-horse in the story is a symbol because the boy rides his rocking-horse when he’s telling his uncle that he’s going to win the race and win the money for his mother. The theme in the story is that money doesn’t buy happiness, even after winning money and gaining luck the boy passes away.