Development of Moral Messages in Leon Rooke’s A Bolt of White Cloth to D.H. Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner
...cal powers. Not only can he look right at the sun, but also, the cloth that he is carrying is no everyday cloth. The cloth is more beautiful than any other cloth they had ever seen: it requires no upkeep, and it practically sews itself. The most extraordinary part though is that there appears to be a never-ending supply of it on the man’s shoulder; he just continues to unroll the cloth “for all eternity”. There is one catch however: this cloth cannot be bought with money, but only with love. The man gives the wife this warning: Should you ever stop loving…you shall lose this cloth and all else. You shall wake up one morning and it and all else will no longer be where you left it. It will all be gone and you will not know where you are. You will not know what to do with yourself. You will wish you’d never been born. The man that delivered the cloth is unusual to say the least, but his message comes through loud and clear: if you lose your love for life, you will not have anything left to live for. In D.H. Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner a very different character delivers the moral message. Paul is a boy who longs to bring his family, especially his mother, luck, in the form of money. He rides his rocking horse demanding that it take him to where there is luck. His rides on the rocking horse are frenzied and make him seem almost demonic, in an innocent way. He has close-set blue eyes, which are nearly always burning through someone. He has an extreme intensity about him that makes him seem somewhat frightening. Paul is very naïve for a young man, thinking that his mother will love him if he can only just bring her luck. He delivers the message that greed may bring you money, but it will eventually cause you to lose what is really important. Both stories contain moral messages warning of something bad happening, but they are delivered in opposite ways. In A Bolt of White Cloth the message is delivered by way of a well-meaning stranger. He gives them a gift and warns that it will disappear should they not follow through with their end of the deal. In The Rocking Horse Winner the message is delivered through Paul’s death. The mother has what she thought she has always wanted: luck and money. In return she has lost something that she never realized was important to her: her son. Without the loss of something in both of the s...