1. Do Now
First: Grab your novels and read for approximately 15 minutes. Remember to respond to at least one question on your reading response sheet.
Then: Go to
and work on your current list of words.

2. Does "luck" mean money? How do you define it?
Let’s Talk About It!
Quickwrite:
Does "luck" mean money? How do you define it?

3. “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence
Why did we choose this text?
To determine the archetypes of the main characters
To analyze nonverbal communication/eye imagery

4. D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) About the author…
Born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire
The fourth of five children of a miner and an educated mother
Attended Nottingham University College where he trained as a teacher.
His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911

5. About the author…
A bit of a bad boy: In 1912, he ran off with the German wife of a Nottingham professor.
She had three children, yet left them and her husband to elope with Lawrence.
He never felt like he was in the “right place”. So he continuously traveled the world with a group of writers and artists.

6. Lawrence’s Themes and Philosophy
Deeply interested in Freudian and Jungian psychology
You should take notice of Freud’s Oedipus Complex in the story.
Oedipus Complex is a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex, associated with a sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex.
Influenced by primitive religions and nature mysticism
Sex and sexual freedom as the cure for what ails modern civilization
Nietzschean idea of the superman and rebellion

7. Lawrence’s Last Years
Becomes an almost guru to a group of women who call him “Lorenzo” and vie for his attention
Tuberculosis worsens, sending he and his wife in search of easier climates
Dies in the South of France in 1930 at age 44.
“What he had seen and felt and known he gave in his writing to his fellow men, the splendor of living, the hope of more and more life … a heroic and immeasurable gift.” ~Frieda Lawrence about her husband

8. Before reading the story: Literary Devices
Nonverbal communication/eye imagery
Much of the communication in the story comes through the eyes
As you read, notice how Lawrence uses this technique to build our interest in the story

9. “The Rocking Horse Winner”
Let’s Read!
“The Rocking Horse Winner”

10. Nonverbal Communication/Eye Imagery
D. H. Lawrence's attention to the eyes helps to convey the innermost feelings of his characters.
It also enhances the mysterious and sometimes unsettling atmosphere of the story by leaving open to question what a gaze or a stare means.
In addition, it correctly calls attention to the fact that a good deal of communication between human beings is nonverbal and that glaring eyes, frowns, furrowed brows, and shrugs can sometimes communicate more meaning than words.

11. Examples of nonverbal communication/eye imagery in “The Rocking Horse Winner”
On the question of whether the mother loves her children, the narrator says in the first paragraph that "only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.”
Regarding the house voices, the narrator says, "They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard."

12. Assignment
Choose one character from the story. Identify his/her archetypes. Then, discuss his/her motivation and goals. Analyze if and how they reach their goals.
Which is more telling in a story, the verbal communication or the non-verbal communication? Explain why and give at least three examples from the story.
THOUROUGHLY answer five questions from the Comprehension Check. Any additional answers will considered as extra credit. Many of you NEED it…

13. In describing Paul, the narrator frequently focuses on the boy's eyes to communicate a mood or a meaning, as in these passages:
The boy watched her [his mother] with unsure eyes.
Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them.
But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close-set eyes.
“Well, I got there!” he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling apart.
The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue eyes, set rather close together.
The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire.
The child, flushed and with eyes blazing, was curiously serene.
The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.
He became wild-eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him.
“I've got to know for the Derby!” the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.
But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.
His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse.
He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones.

14. Homework
Vocabulary.com
Apex

15. Launch
"Where you are is a result of who you were, but where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be."
-Hal Elrod