Imagery of Preludes In T. S. Eliots poem Preludes he portrays the alienation of the individual from society.

His imagery is sharp and clear and he uses many techniques to achieve this. A clear description of what something is, can be pictured in the mind by his precise use of imagery. For example, the words, withered leaves(7) gives a clear image, as does, dingy shades(22). The effect is achieved through descriptions of the human influence, word choice, syntax, and rhythm. Eliot uses descriptions like, the faint smell of beer(15). This definitely brings a smell to your mind. The first stanza begins with a familiar setting, a winter evening(1). This is associated with a lack of growth and a loss of vitality. It also describes death and desolation. This does not last long when we are confronted, with smells of steaks in passageways(2) paints a picture of a polluted and mundane environment. The precise use of descriptive words composes this mood of decline and despair. As seen when you read the burnt-out ends of smoky days(4). The mood is vital to understanding Eliots vision of anguish and despair of the individual that is alienated from society. These moods are expressed throughout with the careful use of imagery, diction and repetition. His distinctive syntax and use of rhythm also enhance the effects of his poetry. Only in stanza III does he actually describe a person and not a body part, as Ratza 2 he does in the stanzas before and after. Example of this is withered leaves about your feet(7), and one thinks of all the hands(21). He also uses the human presence to describe them in the poem, an example of this is, the smell of steaks(2) and to early coffee-stands(18). He makes inanimate objects the topic of his sentence and more important then the people, for example The winter evening settles down/ With smell of steaks in passageways.(1-2). He makes the winter evening the topic of the sentence, not the human presence. In of withered leaves about your feet/ and newspapers from vacant lots(7-8), he makes the non-living, unimportant objects, the focuses of his sentences. Most of the poem is described outside, the winter evening(1) where it is cold and desolate. In stanza III we go inside, where it proves that it is no cleaner, or clasped the yellow soles of feet/ In the palms of both soiled hands(37-38), than outside. Eliot writes of how the world is suffering and how nothing was done by them to deserve this with wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh;/ The worlds revolve like ancient women/ gathering fuel in vacant lots(52-54). Eliot has created a world of ugliness, dirt, and darkness. He uses many forms of imagery to convey this scene to the reader. He uses word choice, literal imagery, description of human extremities and presence, and rhythm. T.S. Eliot writes about a world of suffering and hopelessness and creates a physically powerful emotion with his readers that they feel the desperation of the world, through his imagery. The Damaged Psyche of Humanity Like many modernist writers, Eliot wanted his poetry to express the fragile psychological state of humanity in the twentieth century. The passing of Victorian ideals and the trauma of World War I challenged cultural notions of masculine identity, causing artists to question the romantic literary ideal of a visionary-poet capable of changing the world through verse. Modernist writers wanted to capture their transformed world, which they perceived as fractured, alienated, and denigrated. Europe lost an entire generation of young men to the horrors of the so-called Great War, causing a general crisis of masculinity as survivors struggled to find their place in a radically altered society. As for England, the aftershocks of World War I directly contributed to the dissolution of the British Empire. Eliot saw society as paralyzed and wounded, and he imagined that culture was crumbling and dissolving. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917) demonstrates this sense of indecisive paralysis as the titular speaker wonders whether he should eat a piece of fruit, make a radical change, or if he has the fortitude to keep living. Humanitys collectively damaged psyche prevented people

from communicating with one another, an idea that Eliot explored in many works, including A Game of Chess (the second part of The Waste Land) and The Hollow Men. Eliot maintained great reverence for myth and the Western literarycanon, and he packed his work full of allusions, quotations, footnotes, and scholarlyexegeses. In The Tradition and the Individual Talent, an essay first published in1919, Eliot praises the literary tradition and states that the best writers are those who write with a sense of continuity with those writers who came before, as if all of literature constituted a stream in which each new writer must enter and swim. Only the very best new work will subtly shift the streams current and thus improve the literary tradition. Eliot also argued that the literary past must be integrated into contemporary poetry. But the poet must guard against excessive academic knowledge and distill only the most essential bits of the past into a poem, thereby enlightening readers. The Waste Land juxtaposes fragments of various elements of literary and mythic traditions with scenes and sounds from modern life. The effect of this poetic collage is both a reinterpretation of canonical texts and a historical context for his examination of society and humanity. The Changing Nature of Gender Roles Over the course of Eliots life, gender roles and sexuality became increasingly flexible, and Eliot reflected those changes in his work. In the repressiveVictorian era of the nineteenth century, women were confined to the domestic sphere, sexuality was not discussed or publicly explored, and a puritanical atmosphere dictated most social interactions. Queen Victorias death in 1901 helped usher in a new era of excess and forthrightness, now called the Edwardian Age, which lasted until 1910. World War I, from 1914to 1918, further transformed society, as people felt both increasingly alienated from one another and empowered to break social mores. English women began agitating in earnest for the right to vote in 1918, and the flappers of the Jazz Age began smoking and drinking alcohol in public. Women were allowed to attend school, and women who could afford it continued their education at those universities that began accepting women in the early twentieth century. Modernist writers created gay and lesbian characters and re-imagined masculinity and femininity as characteristics people could assume or shrug off rather than as absolute identities dictated by society. Eliot simultaneously lauded the end of the Victorian era and expressed concern about the freedoms inherent in the modern age. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock reflects the feelings of emasculation experienced by many men as they returned home from World War I to find women empowered by their new role as wage earners. Prufrock, unable to make a decision, watches women wander in and out of a room, talking of Michelangelo (14), and elsewhere admires their downy, bare arms. A disdain for unchecked sexuality appears in both Sweeney Among the Nightingales (1918) andThe Waste Land. The latter portrays rape, prostitution, a conversation about abortion, and other incidences of nonreproductive sexuality. Nevertheless, the poems central character, Tiresias, is a hermaphroditeand his powers of prophesy and transformation are, in some sense, due to his male and female genitalia. With Tiresias, Eliot creates a character that embodies wholeness, represented by the two genders coming together in one body. Motifs Fragmentation Eliot used fragmentation in his poetry both to demonstrate the chaotic state of modern existence and to juxtapose literary texts against one another. In Eliots view, humanitys psyche had been shattered by World War I and by the collapse of the British Empire. Collaging bits and pieces of dialogue, images, scholarly ideas, foreign words, formal styles, and tones within one poetic work was a way for Eliot to represent humanitys damaged psyche and the modern world, with its barrage of sensory perceptions. Critics read the following line from The Waste Land as a statement of Eliots poetic project: These

fragments I have shored against my ruins (431). Practically every line in The Waste Land echoes an academic work or canonical literary text, and many lines also have long footnotes written by Eliot as an attempt to explain his references and to encourage his readers to educate themselves by delving deeper into his sources. These echoes and references are fragments themselves, since Eliot includes only parts, rather than whole texts from the canon. Using these fragments, Eliot tries to highlight recurrent themes and images in the literary tradition, as well as to place his ideas about the contemporary state of humanity along the spectrum of history. Mythic and Religious Ritual Eliots tremendous knowledge of myth, religious ritual, academic works, and key books in the literary tradition informs every aspect of his poetry. He filled his poems with references to both the obscure and the well known, thereby teaching his readers as he writes. In his notes to The Waste Land, Eliot explains the crucial role played by religious symbols and myths. He drew heavily from ancient fertility rituals, in which the fertility of the land was linked to the health of the Fisher King, a wounded figure who could be healed through the sacrifice of an effigy. The Fisher King is, in turn, linked to the Holy Grail legends, in which a knight quests to find the grail, the only object capable of healing the land. Ultimately, ritual fails as the tool for healing the wasteland, even as Eliot presents alternative religious possibilities, including Hindu chants, Buddhist speeches, and pagan ceremonies. Later poems take their images almost exclusively from Christianity, such as the echoes of the Lords Prayer in The Hollow Men and the retelling of the story of the wise men in Journey of the Magi (1927). Infertility Eliot envisioned the modern world as a wasteland, in which neither the land nor the people could conceive. In The Waste Land, various characters are sexually frustrated or dysfunctional, unable to cope with either reproductive or nonreproductive sexuality: the Fisher King represents damaged sexuality (according to myth, his impotence causes the land to wither and dry up), Tiresias represents confused or ambiguous sexuality, and the women chattering in A Game of Chess represent an out-of-control sexuality. World War I not only eradicated an entire generation of young men in Europe but also ruined the land. Trench warfare and chemical weapons, the two primary methods by which the war was fought, decimated plant life, leaving behind detritus and carnage. In The Hollow Men, the speaker discusses the dead land, now filled with stone and cacti. Corpses salute the stars with their upraised hands, stiffened from rigor mortis. Trying to process the destruction has caused the speakers mind to become infertile: his head has been filled with straw, and he is now unable to think properly, to perceive accurately, or to conceive of images or thoughts. Symbols Water In Eliots poetry, water symbolizes both life and death. Eliots characters wait for water to quench their thirst, watch rivers overflow their banks, cry for rain to quench the dry earth, and pass by fetid pools of standing water. Although water has the regenerative possibility of restoring life and fertility, it can also lead to drowning and death, as in the case of Phlebas the sailor from The Waste Land. Traditionally, water can imply baptism, Christianity, and the figure of Jesus Christ, and Eliot draws upon these traditional meanings: water cleanses, water provides solace, and water brings relief elsewhere inThe Waste Land and in Little Gidding, the fourth part of Four Quartets. Prufrock hears the seductive calls of mermaids as he walks along the shore in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but, like Odysseus in HomersOdyssey (ca. 800 b.c.e.), he realizes that a malicious intent lies behind the sweet voices: the poem concludes we drown (131). Eliot thus cautions us to beware of simple solutions or cures, for what looks innocuous might turn out to be very dangerous. The Fisher King

The Fisher King is the central character in The Waste Land. While writing his long poem, Eliot drew on From Ritual to Romance, a 1920 book about the legend of the Holy Grail by Miss Jessie L. Weston, for many of his symbols and images. Westons book examined the connections between ancient fertility rites and Christianity, including following the evolution of the Fisher King into early representations of Jesus Christ as a fish. Traditionally, the impotence or death of the Fisher King brought unhappiness and famine. Eliot saw the Fisher King as symbolic of humanity, robbed of its sexual potency in the modern world and connected to the meaninglessness of urban existence. But the Fisher King also stands in for Christ and other religious figures associated with divine resurrection and rebirth. The speaker of What the Thunder Said fishes from the banks of the Thames toward the end of the poem as the thunder sounds Hindu chants into the air. Eliots scene echoes the scene in the Bible in which Christ performs one of his miracles: Christ manages to feed his multitude of followers by the Sea of Galilee with just a small amount of fish. Music and Singing Like most modernist writers, Eliot was interested in the divide between high and low culture, which he symbolized using music. He believed that high culture, including art, opera, and drama, was in decline while popular culture was on the rise. In The Waste Land, Eliot blended high culture with low culture by juxtaposing lyrics from an opera by Richard Wagner with songs from pubs, American ragtime, and Australian troops. Eliot splices nursery rhymes with phrases from the Lords Prayer in The Hollow Men, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is, as the title, implies a song, with various lines repeated as refrains. That poem ends with the song of mermaids luring humans to their deaths by drowninga scene that echoes Odysseuss interactions with the Sirens in the Odyssey. Music thus becomes another way in which Eliot collages and references books from past literary traditions. Elsewhere Eliot uses lyrics as a kind of chorus, seconding and echoing the action of the poem, much as the chorus functions in Greek tragedies. Hollow Men T.S. Eliots The Hollow Men to me represents several interpretations of death or the end. The poem is split into five parts, each part presenting a different point of view or idea of death. There are several kingdoms of death presented in the various parts, intertwining within eachother throughout. I view each part as representing a different member of the hollow men looking at the different kingdoms of death. Part Is presents a dank, dark cellar and is associated with violence and darkness Violent souls, but not only (16). Part IIs presents deaths dream kingdom and shows a more beautiful side of death, comparing souls to fading stars. Part III presents dead land cactus land. We imagine a desert setting, dying of thirst, praying for life. The supplication of a dead mans hand/Under the twinkle of a fading star.(43-44). Part IV takes place within deaths twilight kingdom that is talked about in part II. The speaker talks of eyes or the lack thereof in a valley of once again, dying stars. There are no eyes here/In this valley of dying stars/In this hollow valley/This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms (53-56). Part V is presents a more broad view of the end, not just for one, but for all. It describes several emotions and actions that everyone takes within their life, inbetween each falls the shadow. One could view this as the shadow of death, ever looming closer in everything you do. The poem ends with This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but with a whimper. (75-78). Death is something that has always been around me in my life. I have had several family members die around me but this particular poem doesnt really make me feel anything about them. It makes me think more about what will happen when I die, when everyone dies. The poem provides a bleak view of death but also has a strange beauty about it. I like the idea of death as various landscapes, something about that sounds strangely appealing despite the

apparent lonliness of the hollow men. No one seems to be in pain or very sad, they are just there. That is similar to how I have always viewed death, not neccessarily as a big experience, you just cease to be. This is exemplified in the final lines of the poem This is the way the world ends/Not with a whimper but with a bang. I dont believe we are nearly as significant as we believe, when it all ends, it will simply be that. The end. Written by ASUMAN BRDAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS : A CUP OF TEA by K.Mansfield The common view that a literary text is likely to be comprehended better if it is studied in parallel with stylistic analysis which emphasizes the crucial role of the linguistic features of the text contributes much to the development of literary criticism. M.A.K.Halliday is one of the text linguists who sees grammar as a network of systems of relationships which account for all the semantically relevant choices in language, which is the standpoint of the stylistic analysis as well. In the light of M.A.K.Hallidays discipline, I will try to analyse a piece of literary text written by Katherina Mansfield in the format of a short story titled A CUP OF TEA and try to criticise the text objectively in relation to its grammatical (functional) features . Before this , Id like to give a brief information about the content of the story. A.INFORMATION ABOUT THE STORY Scanning the story first, we come across with a rich couple named Rosemary and Philip leading an untroubled, desirable life and they seem to love each other since- we have no implication whether they love each other for money or not and everything goes well in their lives.Rosemary spends money without getting into trouble and giving no reason or excuse to her husband in doing this. Everyone in a society admires Rosemary not maybe for her beauty but for her remarkable features such as being interested in current movements from every aspects, seeming as an intelligent young woman, reading the modern books.Philip is not as bright as Rosemary but he makes himself realize as soon as he enters the story towards the end. Apart from the couple, there is a girl who meets Rosemary in a street by asking for money to have a cup of tea then is picked up by her to have a cup of tea at her home and begins to be directed by her. We infer this from the fact that whenever Rosemary wants her to enter the scene she is there but when, at the last scene, Rosemary is jealous of her, the girl is easily disappearad without giving no sign for us to follow the reason of her disappearance. And we have one more character having a part in the story :the shopman.He is also under the effect of Rosemary; we can understand this from his polite behaviours which are made obvious in the text with circumstantial features. But he is the person also who utilizes by the weakness of her.He tries to draw her attraction on the enamel box and succeeds it; he promises her to keep the box for her because he knows her and he knows that she will come to buy it; she has the power of money and gets whatever she desires without acconting for anything to anybody. Not only we encounter with her weakness in her dialogue with the shopman but also in her being jealous of Miss Smith when he utters lovely words for this girl and behaves as it is predicted by Philip who knows directing her and makes her behave as he desires taking advantage of her faulty character successfully.In that sense Philip is an intelligent man and effective on Rosemary who is also obviously the symbol of possessive female by being jealous of the girl she has met in the street; so she has no self-confidence ,she is a little bit credulous. She asks directly-having no hidden meaning in her words- Am I PRETTY?, which ironically reveals her ex-behaviours to Philip even she supposes that Philip is not aware of the truth. B.ANALYSIS

When we look at the story from the point of transitivity functions included in the stylistic analysis which tell us about the language and its reflection on processes ,participants ,circumstantial functions we realize that main participant is Rosemary and most of the processes are acted by her.When we count all the sentences describing her or the ones in which she takes place we realize her dominancy at once. The other participants Id like to analyse on this text -apart from Rosemary- are the girl,Miss Smith, and Philip. Even though Philip hasnt got as many turns as Rosemary and Miss Smith, Id like to examine the processes of him in order to display the currents of events as a whole- he is the efficient figure in the sequences of events in the story-; in other words it is vital to handle it here to maintain the entirety of the text. To do this I will follow M.A.K. Hallidays process in which Ideational, Interpersonal, Textual Functions of language are daelt with in order to support all my commentations on Katherine Mansfields work. IDEATIONAL FUNCTIONS In order to relate the cognitive realities of the text with its language and give the accurate meaning it is essential to deal with the ideational functions of language of it.By this way we will have a deep knowledge of how these characters are seen as , what their mental processes are, what about the circumstantial features, and so on. 1)Rosemary as a participant *Relational processes: In many ways she is presented us very active .There are descriptions both for her physical appearance and for her characteristic features and interests: She was young , brilliant , extremely modern, exquisitely well dressed, amazingly well read in the newest of the new books ... Even the words describing her are beatifully chosen ones and there is nothing which makes her inferior-as it is obviously seen -she is not a woman adored for her goddess beauty but she is an active figure in a society with her doings; however it is not clear whether she makes it to be seen like that or she is really the one known in a society . Her hat, really no bigger than a geranium petal, hung from a branch... The writer of the text here uses metaphorical phrases while describing Rosemarys hat. Infact the writer doesnt generally use such things , the language of the text is direct but here , in describing her appearance,she does this . Infact it is to reflect the prominence that is given for her. *Material processes: She is mostly the actor where the girl is the goal or sometimes the beneficiary recipient: I want you to. To please me. Here I , Rosemary, takes part as an actor whereas you,Miss Smith, is the goal and want is the process which is stated by Rosemary. We may infer that Rosemary is dominant and makes others do whatever she wants to. I only want to make you warm... This time what she desires to be made by her is something good as a concept ; but even it is good for Miss Smith, it is directed by Rosemary and shows her power on her by regarding Miss Smith as a helpless creature which is to be pitied and looked after. Come and sit down, she cried, dragging her big chair up to the fire,in this comfy chair. And the circumstantial features where the actor is Rosemary gives clues for her rich ,comfortable life style. To give more examples: And there! cried Rosemary again , as they reached her beatiful big bedroom with the curtains drawn, the fire leaping on her wonderful lacquer furniture, her gold cushions and the primrose and blue rugs.

She turned impulsively. (She is accustomed to speking freely in a society thanks to the power of the money .) *Mental processes: Looking at how she sees the world around her, we realize that she can mention about what she likes or dislikes and reveals her ideas directly and freely; we have lots of verbs telling us about her cognition and affection: Yes, she liked it very much, she loved it. Rosemary admired the flowers. Rosemary gave no sign. Rosemary laughed out. She decided... She wanted to spare this poor little thing... She saw alittle battered creature with enormous eyes... I hate lilac. 2)The girl as a participant *Relational processes: Physical descriptions are used to introduce her and these descriptions sometimes tell us about the life style of her and mostly show us inferiority of her when compared with Rosemary basically: ...Rosemary turned. She saw a little battered creature with enormous eyes , someone quite young , no older than herself... ...a light , frail creature with tangled hair, dark lips, deep lighted eyes,... ...thin ,birdlike shoulders. ...poor little thing. And we have implications about her manner which are presented us from the eyes of the writer: ...she seemed dazed. she seemed to stagger like a child,... *Material processes: She is the goal where Rosemary is the actor: Rosemary says: I simply took her with me. I want you to.To please me. She wanted to spare this poor little thing from being stared at by the servants. She applied the poor little creature with ,everything,...: And here she is the beneficiary recipient. Even the girl says (accepting her power): You are not taking me to police station.: Here the actor is again Rosemary even the sentence is uttered by the other , she will act the process; the girl is aware of this and she is the recipient again. Rosemary drew the other into the hall. the otheris the girl. *Mental processes: Although her acts are mostly led by Rosemary, we have implications about her feelings as follows: The girl almost cried out . ...burst into tears the girl gazed back at her. she felt how simple and kind her smile was. 3)Philip as a participant *Relational Processes:

There is no sign for his physical appearance and no utterance for his personality also . But we can only guess something by means of the sentences as follows: Philip smiled his charming smile. The we can say that he has charming smile that makes effect on Rosenary. But what an earth are you going to do with her?cried Philip. So, he accounts for something and she behaves in line with Philips desires. *Material Processes: Even though he enters at the last scene , he is the actor in the sentences where Rosemary is the goal: I wanted you come... Here Rosemary is the goal.(You= Rosemary) He came in...he said, and stopped and stared. Here the events are acted by him but this time ,unlike Rosemarys statements, there are some intransitive verbs.In Rosemarys statements ,there are generally recipients and goals(In short there are objects) affected by the process. Philip jumped her on his knee. This is the statement in which Rosemary is the recipient whereas Philip is the actor. *Mental Processes: As soon as he takes a part in the story, he behaves like an observor as it is understood from the sentences below: ..he said curiously, still looking at that listless figure, looking at its hands and boots... ..I wanted you to come... Philip smiled.. ... cried Philip. INTERPERSONAL FUNCTIONS Looking at K.Mansfields story from the point of the language use between the participants, we come across with variability making the text closer to real,authentic usage by means of questions, answers, requests, imperatives,exclamations and so on. To begin with turn-takings between Rosemary and Miss Smith, it is seen that there are lots of questions and answers: May I speak to you a moment? Speak to me? (And this also presents us a part from an authentic language use by shortening the statement.It is also the indicator of bewilderment of Rosemary against the girls behaviour.) ... Would you let me have the price of a cup tea? A cup of tea ?Then have you no money at all? ... Do you like me? And sometimes Rosemary gives answers instead of the girl. She does most of the talking: Of course ,she will. ...She insisted on going...(She says to Philip as if it was said by Miss Smith ,herself.) There are imperatives uttered by Rosemary again ,which proves that she does and gets whatever she wants from helpless people : Come along. Come ,come upstairs. Come and sit down. Dont cry. Do stop crying. She also uses imperatives against Philip: Be nice to her.

Kiss me. But Philip also gives commands to her: Explain Look again,my child. However Miss Smith uses polite requests such as: May I speak to you a moment? Would you let me have the price of a cup of tea. ...so ligthtly and strangely: Im very sorry, madam, but Im going to faint.I shall go off ,madam, if I dont have something. (It is not in an exact polite request form but said politely.) I cant go on no longer like this. I cant bear no more (Totally free in revealing her ideas and feelings not by consulting to politeness.) Exclamations are used by Rosemary sometimes to express her ideas: Charming! How extraordinary! sometimes to present her while thinking to herself: How thoughtless I am! Pretty! Lovely!(By repeating Philips utterances angrily.) Sometimes to demonstrate: There! TEXTUAL FUNCTIONS Both the narrative statements directly by the writer and the dialogues between the participants are involved in the story. Ideas of the characters and their acts are told by the writer of the text as a narrator whereas the chain of particular events ,speech acts are presented via a lot of dialogues in the text.K.Mansfield is like an observor describes the characters ,the events and gives us clues about what the characters are thinking to themselves. For instance, Rosemary is made to think and speak to herself after being jealous of the girl and we can follow her plans which is going to occur. C.CONCLUSION Having analysed this literary text by not commenting on it with my superficial impressions but examinig it in detail considering into the linguistic features of it, I have obtained more objective criticism. Furthermore, it has proved that our impressions supposed to be uttered intuitively and unconsciously has hidden conscious in itself and kept hidden unless it emerges by studying it with its grammatical features which helped me to analyse the short story of Katherine Mansfield more empirically. By means of this stylistic analysis , I,myself, have also seen that a literary text can be interpreted effectively,scientifically,and most correctly when its functional features are studied in detail and one can enjoy the passage even after its linguistic features are dealt with,which is supposed to make the meaning and charming beauty of the work of art loss. Virginia Woolf- The Duchess and the Jeweller Like Virginia Woolfs critically acclaimed Mrs. Dalloway, her short story The Duchess and the Jeweller is a study about how everyone and everything is connected; the poor to the rich, the past to the present, the body to the soul, man to animal. She does not simply explain that these things are true, she shows it through the actions, dialogue and very existence of the characters, so that the reader will never be presented with irrefutable evidence of her relative theory. In the first paragraph, words, mostly material objects possessed only by the wealthy, are repeated. She is writing close to the point of view of Oliver Bacon, the jeweller, and the

repetitive words are the way a man who once was very poor would look at his room, perhaps unconsciously saying the words over and over in his head (chairs jutted outchairs at right angleswindows, three long windowsby a manservant: the manservant would) because he did not always possess these things, he is very aware of them, and something inside of him is still not entirely assured that these things truly belong to him. Woolf goes on to show that Oliver Bacon has a physical characteristic who is linked to the very essence of his ambition; a nose that is so long it quivers and the quivering reaches deep inside, keeping everything within him dissatisfied, like a giant hog in a pasture rich with truffles [that] smells a bigger, blacker truffle under the ground further off. However, Oliver Bacon is not just a ground-truffling hog. He has come a long way from selling stolen dogs to rich women in alleyways. As the worlds most sought-after jeweller, he now has prestige, dignity and the power to makes a duchess wait on him, the daughter of a hundred earls and in a sense, all of those earls are waiting as well, for she carries them with her: Then she loomed up, filling the door, filling the room with the aroma, the prestige, the arrogance, the pomp, the pride of all the Dukes and Duchesses swollen in one wave. While she is waiting, the clock is ticking, and though time has worn Bacons hands, and created a tremulous history between he and the duchess, time also waits on him, as With each tick the clock handed himso it seemedpt de foie gras, a glass of champagne, another of fine brandy, a cigar costing one guinea so that time does not cost him money, but earns And here Virginia Woolf is at her most cunning, because she uses words not just to explain that they have an emotional connection they were friends, they were enemies, but she uses imagery to show that their essences are inexorably intertwined through and through: And as a wave breaks, she broke, as she sat down, spreading and splashing and falling over Oliver Bacon, the great jeweller This, of course, is where the reader finds that Oliver Bacon, the self-made man, the envy of jewellers worldwide, the man who has the Daughter of a Hundred Earls waiting on him while Time itself is his servant, is nothing more than a servant himself. He is uncertain about the validity of the pearls and the story she is trying to sell him, but it soon becomes more evident that it is a story indeed, as he reaches for the bell to summon a servant to fetch his testing kit, but she stops him with a query, one that only she knows could stop a man of such untouchable stature: You will come down tomorrowThe Prime MinisterHis Royal Highness She stopped. And Diana And that is when the coveted truffle that Bacon the hog smells in the distance is discovered. The reader now knows the name of the most precious jewel that the most prestigious jeweller has ever laid eyes upon. He begins to write the check without testing the pearls, but stops. He has come a long way because of one moment in time, when he was caught doing something he wasnt supposed to be doing, and since then he refrained from anything that would cause destruction to him and his career, and so reaped the rewards. The duchess, who knows him inside and out, and has him at the end of a knife, pushes the blade ever further as she uses his first name, like a gentle murder, and finishes the stroke by mentioning what a long weekend it will be, a weekend, he assumes, that will be filled with leisurely hours with time serving him the one thing he desires the most; Dianas sole attention. And so he signs the check because Virginia Woolf loves to harp on the fact that no matter how far a human being travels through harsh time from a dark alleyway to a coveted flat in central London, no matter how many successes have paved the road to a glorious career, no matter how much a person thinks that they have changed, they will always be a scolded child, making the same mortal mistakes; for as Oliver Bacon closes the door, he disassembles himself back to the alley rat he once was, very aware of his mothers chiding voice as he

discovers that the pearls are fake; but a jeweller of his caliber with his reputable position wouldve most likely already known that. Though the check is already written, though the duchess is already out the door with twenty thousand pounds in her hands, though he bemoans the rotten truffle (the fake pearls) it is the last sentence, in all of its rhythmic, poetic elegance that is the final stroke of the signature on the check; it is the last sigh, the breath of release as he lets go of a small fortune, knowing exactly what it is that he is paying for: For, he murmured, laying the palms of his hands together, it is to be a long weekend. Literary analysis: Metaphors in The Rocking Horse Winner, by D. H. Lawrence
A literary analysis of 'The Rocking Horse Winner' by D H Lawrence cannot fail to mention the strong metaphor of the toy rocking horse itself. Other strong metaphors include the race horses and the idea of gambling in general.. The image of a boy rocking himself to illness and death on a toy horse suggests a powerful and upsetting metaphor for a child's burning ambition and distress, and to understand the metaphor we must look more closely at the story itself. In "The Rocking-Horse Winner," short story

by D H Lawrence, a child gets the feeling that circumstances in his family are deteriorating financially and feels utterly powerless to improve the situation. He sees the bitterness of his mother's discontent and tries to improve her lot, although she seems to pay him little regard. All her attention seems concentrated on a husband who, despite his efforts, can never provide enough for her insatiable appetite for material things. Horses in general, gambling on their races and in particular, the rocking horse itself become metaphors for the child's ambition, and the driven quality of his determination to succeed - at all costs. The child, Paul, decides that there will never be means to support his family unless he assumes some sort of control himself. Paul decides to resolve the financial crisis through luck, chance, fate and gambling on horses. He thinks that he can divine winning horses in races by riding his own toy rocking horse. The horse metaphors suggest the themes of ambition in life turning to a blinkered disregard for the costs and consequences in a narrow given area, a drive bordering on obsession. Either by luck or by judgement, Paul actually starts to win money and hopes it will make his mother happy. What he doesn't realise is that she is the sort of person whose appetite will simply grow and whose discontent is of her own making. The need for money just balloons out of control and family members start to put pressure on him. The strain of duty, loyalty, responsibility, guilt, repression and denial of affection and reward becomes so unbearable that he rides his rocking horse so madly that he gets sick and collapses as his chosen horse is about to win a famous race. D H Lawrence's own relationship with his mother - one of love, but also of control - is relevant to the story too. In his drive to succeed, Paul echoes the need of the young Lawrence to please his own mother - and of course, highlights another form of ambition, that of her hopes and dreams for a gifted young son in avoiding the pit life and aiming for something arguably higher and more academic. The horse metaphor it seems, has deep roots in Lawrence's own childhood.

Point of View
.......D. H. Lawrence wrote the story in omniscient third-person point of view, enabling him to reveal the thoughts of the characters. The underlined words in the following sentences are examples of passages that present the thoughts of characters. Paul's mother only made several hundreds, and she was again dissatisfied. She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches for drapery advertisements.

His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself.

Themes
Neglect .......In her preoccupation with material things, Hester neglects to provide Paul the love he needs to develop into a normal, mentally stable child. Faulty Sense of Values .......Hester makes stylish living the chief goal of her marriage. Consequently, her relationship with her husband and the care and nurture of her childrenin particular, Paulstagnate. Whenever money becomes available, she spends beyond her means. Though she and her husband rear their children in a "pleasant house" with servants and a nurse, they seem to regard them as objects for display, like the furnishings in the home. Hester's spending and indebtedness create anxiety that haunts the house and personifies itself by repeatedly whispering the phrase: "There must be more money." Obsession .......Lust for material objects, stylish living, and money so obsesses Paul's mother that she neglects Paul and his sisters. Paul then "inherits" her obsession. But he wants to win money for his mother, not for himself, in order to prove that he has the luck that his father lacks. Having luck and money will make him lovable to his mother, he apparently believes, and silence the house voices. When he discovers that the five thousand pounds he sets aside for her is not enough to achieve his goals, he becomes obsessed with winning more. His mania ultimately kills him. Opportunism .......Oscar Creswell acknowledges that Paul's wagering makes him nervous. But rather than take steps to stop Paul, he encourages him and asks for tips on winning horses. When Paul lies deathly ill muttering the name of his pick for the Derby, Oscar runs off "in spite of himself" and places a bet on the horse at fourteen to one odds. Quest .......Paul rides his rocking horse like a knight on a quest. He seeks a great prize, luck, that will enable him to win money wagering on horses. His winnings will free his mother from a great monster, indebtedness, that consumes all of her attention. Once free, she will be able to turn her attention to Paul and give him the greatest prize of all: love. Deceit .......In the first paragraph of the story, the narrator says Hester does not love her children. Nevertheless, outwardly she pretends to love them, and people say, "She is a good mother. She adores her children."

Climax

.......The climax occurs when Paul falls off his rocking horse after suffering a seizure that leads to his death.

Tragic Irony
.......Paul picks the winning horse in the Epsom Derby but loses his life. The fortune he had amassed, eighty thousand pounds (the equivalent of millions of dollars today), thus became his misfortune.