Summary
Although the family does not usually talk about money, one day Paul begins to speak directly with his mother about it, starting by asking simply why their family does not own their own car but borrows Uncle Oscar's or uses a taxi. Paul's mother replies bitterly that it is because they are the poorer members of the family, and that this in turn is due to Paul's father's being unlucky. When Paul presses her to explain what luck is, she says that it is that which causes one to get more and more money.
The truly difficult question follows thereafter: how does one know whether one is lucky or not? Paul's mother seems convinced that she must be unlucky to have married an unlucky husband, but Paul, inexplicably, declares that he is lucky, because God told him so. His mother, incredulous, laughs at him. Perceiving that his mother neither believes him nor cares about what he had said, Paul is both angered and hurt.
In order to prove his luckiness to her, he goes off on his own in a childish way to seek luck. He thinks of luck as a place which he must try to find, and in order to do so, he does not look to other people or to the outside world, but searches within himself. To do this, he rocks back and forth with an unnatural frenzy on his rocking-horse, which disturbs his sisters.
After he finishes rocking on his horse, which seems to him as a sort of journey, he gets off and stares into its eyes. Speaking silently to it, he commands it: "Now take me to where there is luck!" He even uses a little whip which his Uncle Oscar gave him as a present to urge on the horse. The nurse, seeing this behavior, fears that Paul will break his horse, but Paul does not heed her warnings and instead rides on.
Analysis
For a story in which "luck" is one of the central ideas, it would be worth looking at one explicit definition of it. Paul's mother replies to Paul's question "Then what is luck, mother?" by explaining: "It's 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." She goes on to explain that she is rather sure that she is herself unlucky but also that no one ever knows for sure why one is lucky or not. In this regard, it would be very interesting to note that the narrator actually defines her as unlucky in the first sentence of the story, and perhaps even more interesting to note that the narrator never speaks in such an objectively certain manner about whether Paul is lucky or not. It would actually be fair to describe the story as Paul's insistence and attempt to convince his mother that he is lucky - and that by extension she too is lucky. This would follow the same logic of luck (and wealth) passing through family connections, which is how Paul's mother concludes that she must be unlucky (because she married Paul's unlucky father).
While Paul and his mother (and the other characters) talk about luck or fortune, what is left unspoken is love. In fact, love, as Paul's mother's feeling towards her children, is denied outright in the beginning of the story, and during the conversation in this section, we see how concerns about luck trump loving concern. Paul's mother's words turn out to be true: Paul's luck earns him more and more money. However, it earns him no love, until it is too late. She has assumed that the vital nourishment that she and her family require is money guaranteed by luck, and thereby she forgets the emotional/psychological nourishment of love. Luck and love show themselves to be diametrically opposed in this story, so that the farther that Paul goes in the direction of luck, the farther he seems to go from love.
His gambling brings him closer to Uncle Oscar and Bassett, neither of whom are in a position to give him love. Uncle Oscar is more or less only interested in making money and observing the boy's strange talent, while Bassett has a kind of religious awe for Paul; up to Paul's final, fatal madness, neither worries about the boy's personal well-being. His mother is similarly unconcerned at first, viewing him as just a child to be sent to school (whence comes some of her desire for more money), but eventually a more genuine concern breaks through. It is at the extremes of luck (Paul making his biggest win) and love (Paul's mother actually loving him for once) where the two forces meet and then immediately plummet to zero.
