Insanity In Ernest Hemingway's 'Rocking Horse'

In the text Rocking Horse Winner there is presented a very unstable boy who is constantly vying for his mothers attention. He actually drives himself insane just trying to be loved and accepted by his mother. His mother, meanwhile kept the image of being a perfect woman and mom, but her behavior took a very twisted turn. In reality she did not love anyone except herself. In the title it mentions a rocking horse, this was a type of metaphor throughout the story. Paul uncle would take him to the races and earn lots of money mainly for Pauls mother, and the rocking horse that paul owned was considered the winning horse of the races. The Rocking Horse Winner is a story of vain, betrayal, sinister love and the death of a child in which multiple factors contribute. I believe that Paul was the one to kill himself. He clearly managed to drive himself insane trying to please his mother. As well when he would use the rocking horse to clarify who won, took a toll on Paul. Every time he used it, it almost took a part of him, a part of his soul and innocence. The rocking horse was something very dark, and dangerous. The malicious little thing was very unnatural, evil
even. Quoting from the text, “The boy watched him with big, blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire n them, and he never said a word.” You could almost see the darkness in his eyes, the affect the horse had on him was overbearing, much like his mother. He spiraled into an unstable mess of emotion every time he used the rocking horse. One that was uncertain and malicious, and one that slowly killed him. The way the house whispered was also another factor killing Paul.
Paul from closer reading of the texts almost sounds like he may have mental problems, ones that he got apart from the rocking horse. I would probably call it Schizophrenia. The whispering Paul noticed is a clear symptom of mental instability. Other factors contributing to this is that he had such bizzare behavior, he heard and saw things that weren’t there. As well Paul was always seemingly isolated, he couldn’t please the people around him and he was never pleased with himself. He had problems paying attention, strong beliefs that weren’t real, his own hallucinations and his thoughts that would jump between different spaces. The whispering that Paul experienced just added to whatever problem Paul had, it only made him that much more
insane. Obviously one of the largest culprits for Paul’s death is his mother. His driven insanity may have been what inevitably put him in the ground. Although his mother could be seriously considered to be the one to have thrown the dirt on top of him. The way his mother acted, with selfishness and vain caused her to really turn a blind eye toward Paul and his off-beat behavior. She wasn’t what one would consider to be a ‘nurturing’ mother. Most of his childhood Paul spent seeking to please his mother, and to quiet the whispering of the house. Paul’s motivation to endlessly please his mother kind of turned his mother into the neglectful woman that she was. He put her needs before his own and she noticed this, probably expecting it from then on. By doing this Paul only sank deeper into the despairing and confusing mental state which eventually killed him. He became vulnerable and weak after finding that his mother was incapable of love. Not only did she not show affection, but she didn’t stop when it came to tainting and twisting her son, she drove her own bitter attitude into him. Paul eventually became the sad, sour image of what his mother really was. A part of Paul that needed attention and love and the nurturing of a mother was eventually killed, and along the way it killed all of him. Pauls death could be due to so many different things, his mother, his own darkness, or his mental state. Paul never opened up about his own condition, he bottled it up and never truly faced what was happening to him. The Rocking Horse was just a metaphor, something that as children we see as fun, but as we grow older we see that it’s just a waste of time. “To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.” Sylvia Plath, Terri Guillemets.