Introduction
The short stories “The Gift of the Magi” by O Henry and “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence are both timeless classics that have touched readers all over the world due to their universal themes of love, luck, and poverty. In the Gift of the Magi, the story revolves around the unconditional love of a husband and wife, Jim and Della. They live in dire straits but desire to give each other something special for Christmas. The husband chooses to sell his expensive watch to get a lovely comb for his beautiful wife Della whereas Della sells her beautiful hair to get a watch chain for Jim. When it is time to exchange gifts, they find that the gifts are quite useless to them; but, at the same time, these gifts are priceless because of the selfless love they symbolized. The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence revolves around Paul and his mother Hester who is an English woman haunted by a sense of failure and a fathomless passion for money. Her son Paul desires to get the “luck” that his mother desires. Paul soon realizes he has the gift of magically knowing in advance the winning horse in horse races if he rode on the rocking horse. This leads him to make some money that he gives to his mother. Instead of satisfying her, it merely sends her into a craving for more money. Paul rides the rocking horse to his death and in so doing makes eighty thousand pounds.
Similarities
Both the stories are based on the role of money in ordinary people’s lives. Jim and Della do not have the money to buy gifts for each other for Xmas. The story begins with the line: “One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all” (O Henry 1). In the case of Rocking Horse Winner, the poverty is of a different kind: “There was never enough money. …for the social position which they had to keep up” (Lawrence, p. 30). As a result of the lack of money, Jim and Della are moved to sell their precious belongings while Paul is forced to push himself on the rocking horse in search of luck. Thus, Jim, Della, and Paul are pushed to a state of self-sacrifice as a result of a shortage of money.
Another unifying element in the stories is that the main characters are motivated by the emotion of love and the desire to give a gift to their loved ones. The love of Della motivates Jim to sell his watch while the love of Jim motivates Della to sell her precious hair. They do it so that they may give each other Christmas gifts. Paul’s love for his mom motivates him to go to the rocking horse in search of luck. His mother confides to him that she considers herself to be an unlucky woman married to an unlucky man. To allay her fears, Paul embarks on his quest for luck. He earns his first five thousand pounds and plans to gift it to his mother for her birthday. Loving and expressing love through a material gift are common elements in the two stories. Moreover, both the stories have a reference to Christmas.
Contrasts
The Gift of the Magi is a remarkably simple story with two main characters Jim and Della while the Rocking Horse Winner has many characters apart from Paul, his mother Hester, his two sisters, Paul’s uncle Oscar Cresswell and Bassett, the gardener are all important characters in the story. The main protagonists are of similar soft honest loving nature in the Gift of the Magi. But in the story “Rocking Horse Winner”, the characters are of different types.
Paul’s mother is a complicated woman who desires to have a high lifestyle that is always beyond what money she has. Paul is an isolated lonely young man who fiercely desires to get lucky to prove his self-worth and to bring money to his mother. Uncle Oscar is a gambling person who is into horse racing.
The stories convey different moods and different messages at the end. “The Gift of the Magi” ends on a very positive note and the author celebrates the love of Jim and Della through the words: “let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. …..They are the magi” (O Henry, p. 7). Contrastingly, “The Rocking Horse Winner” ends with the words of Oscar, mourning the loss of Paul in a deprecating manner: “But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner” (Lawrence, p.32).
Conclusion
While the Gift of the Magi has all good and simple characters, Rocking Horse Winner has complex characters in Hester and Paul. Both the stories show that love has the power to overcome the lack of money, though in different ways, and both the stories involve the element of self-sacrifice. Overall one finds that the Gift of the Magi by O Henry and Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence are powerful stories that make the readers think about the value of money and love in the world.
Works Cited
- Lawrence, D. H. The Rocking-Horse Winner. Dramatic Publishing, 1966.
- O Henry. “The Gift of the Magi”. Best Stories of O Henry: Gift Of The Magi, The Ransom Of Red Chief, Mammon And The Archer And Others. Kessinger Publishing, 2004