Lawrence and Dobyns Essay Revision

The human listen is a complex and often mysterious force. speckle it has a great capacity for logic and reasoning, in that location is also a part of it that reacts in a more primal, emotional way. It non only controls what we think, just now how we think, and often this can lead us to do things that we would not otherwise consider doing. These actions can go bad so much the center of our thoughts that we can think of nothing else. We are forced to follow a course of action that can prove to be quite detrimental, and often even deadly. It is doable for us to convince ourselves that there is only one possible solution to a dilemma, and because of that, we can find ourselves turn out of control and into an abyss of destruction with little chance of steering away from it.Both Rocking cater Winner and Kansas illustrate this circumstance in contrasting ways. D.H. Lawrence, in Rocking Horse Winner, uses the desire of a child, capital of Minnesota, who wants desperately to gain the opportunity that he has been told his entire life that his parents rush lacked, and in so doing help retain the whispers of a house that demands money. His straits sets on the need to acquire this luck however he must, and one time he starts on the course to gain it, his fate falls into place. In his mind, gaining the luck natterms to be a course for gaining his mothers respect instead of the sham with which he has lived his entire life. If only he can stop the whispers of the house, the hard little place (340) in his mothers heart lead dissolve and she will feel a genuine warmth and caring for her children. This hope becomes his obsession, and his mind locks on the solution that he sees, and nothing can deter him from his goals.Conversely, Stephen Dobyns, in the short story Kansas, writes about a uttermostmer who sets his mind on the destruction of wickedness demonstrated by his wife and the man with whom she runs off. His mind is so set on this course of action that the male child who rides with him finds the strength of his resolve (109) more scare than the gun that lies between them. The boy perceives it as possible that the sodbuster will do anything to achieve his goal, and the caution that this instills him in prevents him from taking actions that, later in life, he regrets not taking. In his old age, as he is dying, his mind plays over the scene and various possible results if only the boy of so legion(predicate) years before had tried to steer the course of the farmers resolve in another(prenominal) direction.Both of these stories by D.H. Lawrence and Stephen Dobyns demonstrate the power of the human mind to make one thought overpower all others so completely that there bes to be no other resolution. The thought becomes an obsession, and, dapple it is possible that the obsession could be diverted, the task is a difficult one.While Paul and the farmer share the fact that their minds have resolved that they have one way, and one way only, to accomplish their goals, those goals take vastly different forms. Paul wishes to acquire something, and he reaches out with his mind into a realm of fantasy in which equitation his rocking horse will help him reach his dreams and make things right. The farmer is more practical in a way, keeping his thoughts focused on a more tangible way of solving his problem. However, while Paul wishes to create, the farmer wishes to destroy. Pauls desire to grab onto luck and hold on and the farmers desire to rid the world of wickedness are both quite logical in their minds, while the futility of these desires is obvious to the reader. However, those who are obsessed can rarely, if ever, realize that such futility is present. They have to learn it on their own, alone too often the results of their obsession are tragic.The stories also diverge in their similarities when considering other important characters. In Rocking Horse Winner, while others are allowed to see brief glimpses of Pau ls obsession, no one rightfully knows to what lengths it has gone. Bassett and Oscar only know that Paul wishes to continue to gain money for the benefit of his mother. They dont see the obsession until it is too late for them to do anything about it, if such a thing is possible.However, the boy in Kansas, quickly gets insight into the obsession of the farmer. While his time is more limited during the short ride he is given, he has a chance to try and divert the farmer from his murderous goal. The task is difficult, but the misfortune is there, although his fear keeps the boy from giving it more than a weak attempt. He even goes so far as to promise not to talk to the police, which takes away the one other chance that he has to roll a stop to the farmers plans. This leads to a dying obsession of the old man that the boy has become to ponder all of the other possible outcomes of his encounter from so many years before. He will never know what really happened, however, and this lea ds to his last moments being overcome by thoughts of what cleverness have been.Love, or perhaps the lack of jockey, plays a part in both stories as well. It is obvious that this emotion is what spurs the boy in Lawrences story on to his obsession. He sees the chance to gain real love from his mother, and that chance taunts him and pulls him in to his obsession. While it is luck that he convinces himself that he really wants, and even needs, it is the lack of love from his mother that haunts him, and the desire to fill the void in himself becomes all encompassing. He effectively fools himself into thinking that luck is his great desire. In the end, perhaps he acquires his mothers love, but by then it is too late.Dobyns demonstrates how love can be perverted and turned into something dark and evil. One can assume that the farmer loves his wife, but her betrayal of him, if it does not destroy that love, certainly creases it and makes him want to kill that which hurt him. He convince s himself in his mind that he is doing it to destroy the wickedness that he sees represented in this betrayal, and only by putting to death the objects of this wickedness will he set things right. Perhaps he believes that by destroying the object of his love he can destroy the pain that he surely feels because of the betrayal. He must stomp it out (108) because that is what he believes he is supposed to do and he resolves that it is something that only he can do, because he is the one who was betrayed, and his wife is his own business and not that of outsiders who he likely sees as interlopers who will rob him of his final resolution.While one might write off the actions of Paul as youthful ignorance, it is more difficult to forgive the farmer. His life experience should tell him that his intended actions are wrong, but his mind finds a way to twist this knowledge and turn it into something that seems justtified and even acceptable. Paul is his own victim, but the farmer has other victims in his sights, who seem right in his mind, for he was a victim of the wickedness exhibited by his targets.So we see in these two stories the power of the mind to destroy those that it rules.It can turn thoughts into overwhelming obsessions which lead people into actions that they would not normally consider. When paired with deep emotion, the possibilities of what a person will do to feed those obsessions increase to degrees that might not seem possible to that person or those people close to him or her.