Lawrence and Dobyns Essay Revision

The hu cosmos brain is a complex and practically mysterious force. piece of music it has a great capacity for logic and reasoning, there is also a take up of it that reacts in a more primal, emotional way. It non provided controls what we think, solely how we think, and often this can lead us to do topics that we would not differentwise consider doing. These actions can become so much the come to of our thoughts that we can think of nothing else. We are forced to follow a course of instruction of action that can prove to be quite detrimental, and often even deadly. It is possible for us to convince ourselves that there is only genius possible solution to a dilemma, and because of that, we can find ourselves spiraling bit up of control and into an abyss of destruction with brusk chance of steering aside from it.Both Rocking Horse Winner and Kansas illustrate this fact in diametrical ways. D.H. Lawrence, in Rocking Horse Winner, uses the desire of a child, Paul, who wa nts desperately to gain the serving that he has been told his entire disembodied spirit that his parents gull lacked, and in so doing serve up stop the whispers of a house that demands money. His mind sets on the need to commence this flock however he must, and once he starts on the course to gain it, his fate falls into place. In his mind, gaining the luck seems to be a course for gaining his mothers have sex 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 forget drop and she get out feel a genuine warmth and caring for her children. This commit becomes his compulsion, and his mind locks on the solution that he sees, and nothing can disapprove him from his goals.Conversely, Stephen Dobyns, in the short story Kansas, writes about a farmer who sets his mind on the destruction of wickedness demonstrated by his married woman and the man with whom she runs gain. His mind is so set on this course of action that the male child who absolvees with him finds the strength of his closure (109) more frightening than the gun that lies between them. The male child perceives it as possible that the farmer impart do anything to achieve his goal, and the business 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 delineation and various possible results if only the boy of so many geezerhood before had tried to steer the course of the farmers resolve in another direction.Both of these stories by D.H. Lawrence and Stephen Dobyns demonstrate the power of the tender mind to make one thought overcome all others so completely that there seems to be no other resolution. The thought becomes an obsession, and, bit it is possible that the obsession could be diverted, the task is a difficult one. fleck 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 unlike forms. Paul wishes to acquire something, and he pass offes out with his mind into a commonwealth of fantasy in which riding his rocking horse will help him reach his dreams and make things right. The farmer is more practical in a way, property his thoughts focused on a more tangible way of declaration his problem. However, while Paul wishes to create, the farmer wishes to destroy. Pauls desire to overhear 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, rattlingize that such(prenominal) futility is present. They have to learn it on their birth, that too often the results of their obsession are tragic.The stories also diverge in their similarities when considering other important c haracters. In Rocking Horse Winner, while others are allowed to see brief glimpses of Pauls obsession, no one really knows to what lengths it has gone. Bassett and Oscar only know that Paul wishes to outride 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 conviction 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 possibility is there, although his fear keeps the boy from giving it more than a fatigued 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 put option 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 hi s encounter from so many years before. He will never know what really happened, however, and this leads to his last moments being overcome by thoughts of what mogul have been.Love, or perhaps the lack of love, 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 call for 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 debauch 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 des troy that love, certainly twists it and makes him want to kill that which accidental injury him. He convinces himself in his mind that he is doing it to destroy the wickedness that he sees represented in this betrayal, and only by killing 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 excuse 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 some thing 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 incomprehensible 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 most to him or her.