As with Lawrence's young protagonist, the burden of excellence becomes too great, and the girl feels she cannot provide for her family -- intellectually, rather than financially. The metaphor of the boy's rocking horse, endlessly rocking back and forth to churn out the names of winners in maddening repetition becomes transformed, in "Suicide Note," into another kind of repetitive metaphor, that of failed flight. The boy, who should have rode on a real horse into his future becomes locked in childhood, madness, and misery, trapped by the adult-sized needs of his family, and the girl, who should have sailed confidently into adulthood dies a failed attempt at flying. The girl is endlessly flapping her invisible wings to take flight but sinks to her death as she jumps to her demise, trying and failing to fly for real. The anonymous speaker of the poem is an adolescent, unlike Lawrence's child, and...
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