MARXISM
MARXIST LITERARY THEORY
~ A form of critique or discourse for interrogating all societies and their texts in terms of specific issues - including the race, class, and the attitudes shared within the given culture.

THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER - D.H Lawrence



The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck." Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; her husband is a ne'er-do-well and her work as a commercial artist doesn't earn as much as she'd like. The family's lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household. Her children, a son Paul and his two sisters, sense this anxiety, and Paul even claims he can hear the house "whispering" There must be more money.
Paul tells his Uncle Oscar Cresswell about betting on horse races with Bassett, the gardener. He's been placing bets using his pocket money and has won and saved three hundred twenty pounds. Sometimes he says he is "sure" of a winner for an upcoming race, and the horses he names do in fact win, sometimes at remarkable odds. Uncle Oscar and Bassett both place large bets on the horses Paul names.
After further winning, Paul and Oscar arrange to give the mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only lets her spend more. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be "lucky". As the Derby approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. Concerned about his health, his mother rushes home from a party and discovers his secret. He has been spending hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night long, until he "gets there", into a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner's name.
Paul remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul's bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has 80,000 pounds, Paul says to his mother:

"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure – oh absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!"

"No, you never did," said his mother.

The boy dies in the night and his mother hears her brother say, “My God, Hester, you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner.”

CRITICISM
As I can picture out in the story, the The Rocking Horse Winner pictures out, as I can say, the state-of-life of the characters which belong to the middle level class family. Hester in the story is the mother of Paul who became very disappointed in the life she had after she had married her husband. Paul, her son, after receiving a rocking horse as a Christmas present to him felt that he can tell what racing horse could win and that he decided in betting horses in the race. And whatever horses he names were the horses that actually win.
Why did Paul decided on betting horses? that is because her mother, Hester, though her desired lifestyle exceeds their family income, still decide that she gets what she wanted, so just as to satisfy her mother, Paul think of anyways how to fulfill her mother's desire.
So here in the story, the main character Paul, and his mother Hester belong to a middle level class family. Hester here decided to fulfill her desired lifestyle though the family income doesn't meet this. She became disappointed to whatever her life become. The short story obviously revealed the attitude of Hester on how she worked with her life being a poor woman. While Paul her son, acted accordingly on how to make money for her mother to become satisfied until he gets sick.
So therefore I conclude that Hester came from a rich family, so when she married and discover that her husband cannot make enough money for her to get her desired lifeless became disappointed. That I think is the culture Hester used to be that is why she acted like the story.

READER - RESPONSE
~ A literary criticism that focuses primarily on the reader's reaction to a text.
~ It recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation.
~ It redefines the role of the text from an independent object into something that can only exist when it is read and interacts with the mind of the reader.

A LIFE - Sylvia Plath

Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless thread work of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.

At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair, 
Short-reined, pawing like parade ground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy

As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.

Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.

A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.

The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.

CRITICISM 

As stated above, in the reader response theory, the reader is the one who gives meaning to what they have 

read through his or her interpretations. In this poem A life, the speaker here is asking to touch something. It 

could be a picture or something else but due to the very large scale of different views I therefore conclude

that the speaker was referring to a painting. The speaker want us to touch the painting that has different 

beautiful views of nature, based on what i have understood. So here I can infer that the while the speaker is 

describing the surroundings, she may be felling happy and relaxed, but at the last part of the poem, the 

speaker suddenly changed her subject. the speaker already involved different people, a man and a woman, 

who is both suferring I think in depression.They cannot appreciate or they are not somehow related to their

outside world. The woman that was mentioned in the poem was in the hospital so it is obviously that she 

cannot the beautiful views. Same with the man in the poem. 

So to Sum up, I can infer that the poem was all about how people always enjoy views of nature without even 

realizing that some poeple are suffering from many factors and cannot enjoy what others enjoy.

So This is it! This is how I interpreted the poem, but as another reader read the poem, he or she may

have a different interpretation regarding on what they read. That will explain how reader response 

theory works.       

The poem itself is very deep in meaning it will depend upon the reader on how she or he will interpret it.