Lesson 4: Theme: Gambling

Three short stories: Catherine Lim's Little Ironies , Paper and Lottery and D.H. Lawrence's The Rocking Horse Winner . http://www.dowse.com/fiction/Lawrence.html

In relation to Paper, you should explain exactly what the title refers to and why it is so significant to gambling, gains on the stock market and ultimately the conclusion of the story.
Tay Soon and Yee Lian who worked hard to earn their forty-eight thousand all put their money into the market shares. They earned a lot of ‘paper gains’ after a few days and could not stop buying more shares. Shortly after the market crashed, and all their profits were lost, Tay Soon suffered an emotional breakdown. Not long after that, he was hospitalized and he died. The paper house that Yee Lian made for him was ‘a delicate framework of wire and thin bamboo strips covered with finely worked paper of a myriad colours’. The paper house was seven feet tall and was made to Yee Lian’s specifications. It was burnt at Tay Soon’s funeral. The title referred to the paper gains and how it turned into a paper house for Tay Soon.

For The Rocking Horse Winner, write a paragraph of 100 words in which you point out who was responsible for Paul's death.
I think the reason for Paul’s death was mainly because of his obsession for luck. After successfully winning some money the money his uncle gave him the first time he gambled, he started to gamble more and more with bigger amounts of money. His mother’s explanation of luck also made him curious about luck and wanted to ‘arrive’ at where luck is. He ‘knew’ the winning horse of most races and won a lot of money. When he stopped ‘knowing’, he was upset and was determined to ‘know’ the result for the next race. His uncle’s and Bassett’s partnership also made him all the more determined. In the end, he had brain fever and died.