Consider the way the characters of The Bottle imp and the Rocking-horse Winner end up. Do they get what they deserve?

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Consider the way the characters of The Bottle imp and the Rocking-horse Winner end up. Do they get what they deserve?

Both The Bottle Imp and The Rocking horse are fables; a fable is a myth or a story which normally has a moral to be learnt they are often described as a legend, fables such as Aesop’s animal are best known. Fables frequently unite everyday settings with a fantastical element, and are usually written in a distinctive style using colloquial lexis there are the traditional form of writing a story but modern writers have used them to get a particular point across. The reasons for writing a fable can be to get a particular moral point of view across or for a lesson to be learnt.

  Both these stories can be considered to be fables because they both show characters that gain money and advantages from a fantastical source but also show the characters suffer for these reasons due to this a lesson can be learnt that clearly money isn’t everything, it doesn’t necessarily bring happiness.

The Bottle Imp is written by D.H. Lawrence and the themes which run trough the story are sacrifices, love, poverty, evil and fortune. The writer uses these themes to express his own ethics and principles on the matter. The story symbolises these themes and contain a number of lessons to be learnt. The morals which the writer wants the audience to pick up on are linked to all the themes for example: In the Bottle imp Keawe’s relatives are killed in result of the wish keawe made, keawe is distressed at this and the writer emphasises the point people are more important then money. The morals are uncovered by incidents which cause grief to the character. We can tell the story is a fable from the introduction of the story it’s looking back on a character and set out like a legend.

The Rocking-horse winner is written by Robert Louis Stevenson the themes which run through are similar to those which run through the Bottle Imp they are both about poverty and the solutions to it. The structure and language used in the story indicate it’s a fable because of the characters being referred to as a third person and also the vocabulary used is understandable.

The outline of the Bottle Imp is the story is based on a character called Keawe who is tricked into buying a bottle; this bottle contains an imp which has magical powers and can grant any wish. But if the bottle is brought by a person who dies with the bottle in their possession they are doomed to life in hell. The bottle has certain conditions which need to be accepted for example the bottle can only be sold without making a profit this meant eventually there would come a time when the bottle would loose its value and the owner would suffer for eternity. Keawe is the first main character who encounters the bottle and the bottle gets passed through a series of people until keawe is affected by the disease of leprosy and buys the bottle back in fear that his future with his wife Kokua may be affected. Kokua is unaware of the bottle at this time so when Keawe is depressed because of the fear of living in hell for eternity she feels it’s her fault. Finally when Keawe reveals the reason for his behaviour Kokua realises that there is a difference in the cost of different currency so decides to take Keawe to France. In France a series of events take place where both Kokua and Keawe sacrifice there life for the needs of each other and this results them both being freed from the bottle and it’s implications.

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In the Rocking-horse Winner the main character is a young boy called Paul who is in search of luck after his mother states there is no luck in the family, he wants to prove to his mother he is lucky so he can win her love and stop the whispering in the house. In search of this luck Paul is lead to a rocking horse which he uses to go in to deep thought and predict the winning horse, this results in Paul gambling on a regular basis to make money which was believed to be his luck.  Paul uses ...

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