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Quote 1

‘[Luck is] what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That's why it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money.’

Paul’s mother informs Paul of her worldview, which inspires Paul to go on a search for luck. When Paul questions his mother about her unhappiness, she compares herself to Uncle Oscar, deeming her own immediate family to be "the poor ones in the family." Paul’s mother is misguided in equating luck with wealth, but this is understandable given her family's history with gambling. However, these lines are significant because they mark the moment Paul’s mother passes her own misconceptions about wealth and luck on to her son, ultimately to his detriment. 

Quote 2

‘Our house. I hate our house for whispering.’ 

‘What does it whisper?’ 

‘Why – why’ – the boy fidgeted – ‘why, I don't know. But it's always short of money, you know, uncle.’ 

‘I know it, son, I know it.’

This exchange between Paul and his uncle Oscar reveals the child’s inner motivation for seeking out luck, but his uncle doesn’t recognize the danger of the child’s pathological obsession with money. Paul explains that he wants to stop the whispering, something Uncle Oscar doesn’t fully understand but seems to take in stride. This is the first time in the story where the whispering of “There must be more money!” is spoken about openly, and two interesting details stand out. First, Paul tells Uncle Oscar that he hears voices, but Uncle Oscar doesn't intervene to help. Instead, his reply suggests that the manifestations of money troubles as ghostly whispers are inevitable under the circumstances. Second, Uncle Oscar seems to identify with the feeling of being "always short of money," suggesting that his financial situation might be closer to his sister’s than she realizes. 

Quote 3

There were flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury Paul's mother had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and almond-blossom, and from under the piles of iridescent cushions, simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: ‘There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w - there must be more money! - more than ever! More than ever!’

Paul thinks he has solved his mother’s problem, but the voices grow even louder as she squanders the 5,000 pounds Paul has secretly given to her. The money is intended to help his mother pay off her debts and quiet the whispering of the house, but instead she goes further into debt by chasing material goods. Lawrence here suggests that the more money people have, the more they might spend. In Paul’s mother’s world, there is no catching up to the debts she has already incurred; she can only dive further into debt for the sake of appearances. Greed is a hungry beast, but the more one feeds it, the more powerful it grows.

Quote 4

‘My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner.’

These final lines of the story reveal the moral ugliness of the story’s adults in blunt directness. First, Oscar’s words openly reveal how callous and hard-hearted he can be about the boy he spoke to so lovingly earlier in the story. Second, they reveal a sort of deep connection between Paul’s mother and Oscar because he feels comfortable saying this aloud to her about her deceased son as if he assumes that her primary concern is also money. This is also the very first appearance of Paul’s mother name, Hester, in the story. Up until this moment, she’s only been referred to as “the mother” or “Paul’s mother.” In this negative fairy tale, the finale occurs when Paul’s mother’s finally receives the "luck" she thought she craved while simultaneously witnessing the cruelty of Oscar's heart and the death of her son.  

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