Summary
As the Derby approaches, Paul becomes even more anxious, and his health declines precipitously. In parallel, his mother is seized at times which such bouts of worry that she feels she must rush to Paul. Two nights before the Derby, Paul's mother is inexplicably overcome by one of these bouts of anxiety for her son and returns home from a party to check on him.
Before coming back, she phones the nurse to ask about Paul. The nurse reports that Paul is in his room and should be fine, but when she offers to go up to check on him, Paul's mother declines, not wanting to disturb her son.
However, when she herself returns home, she senses that something is off. As she approaches his room, she realizes that she knows what is going on and goes in to see. Entering his room and turning on the lights, she finds him rocking on his horse in a mad frenzy and yelling the name of the horse who will win at the Derby. He collapses, and she rushes over to take him into her arms. When Uncle Oscar hears of Paul's prediction, he bets on the horse and makes a large sum of money.
In one of his last moments of consciousness, Paul asks Bassett about how they did at the Derby. Bassett replies faithfully that they won, just as Paul said they would, and that it was their biggest winning yet. Paul takes this as final proof of his luckiness to his mother, and asks her whether he has ever told her that he is lucky. She replies in the negative. Paul dies soon after.
Analysis
The climactic scene of the story, along with the immediate lead-up to it and what follows, is the most meaningful section of the story in which all the important elements - luck, love, family, madness - come together and often flip in orientation. To begin with, we find in Paul's mother's newfound and strangely overwhelming concern for her son a complete reversal of her previous stoniness and lack of concern for him. In tandem with a change in the attitude of her concern is a change in the way she perceives her son with care. Whereas earlier she does not say anything about Paul's gambling, towards the end of the story she explicitly warns him against it and then even rushes back from a party because of her sense that he is in danger. Here, she negotiates between her societal instinct and emotional instinct. For example, when she tells the nurse not to check on Paul because "she did not want her son's privacy intruded upon" (as would be proper etiquette), but then ends up going up to see for herself because she feels too anxious for him.
This surge of raw love within her is paralleled by Paul's surge of luck for what will become his biggest win; the two movements dovetail in a practically orgasmic moment when Paul yells the name of the winning horse - and significantly, stares his blazing blue eyes at his mother - and his mother catches him with "all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her." The barely concealed sexual forces end up expending themselves entirely, having reached their absolute end, so that Paul is left dead and his mother "heart-frozen."
He also becomes a substitute for his father; since Paul's mother told Paul that she is unlucky by connection to her husband's unluckiness, Paul hopes that by becoming lucky, he will take his father's place and make his mother happy. It is telling that we do not even hear of the father at the end and even more telling that the final voice is not that of "Hester" (as we know Paul's mother), Paul himself, Bassett, or the narrator, but Uncle Oscar, the most experienced gambler, who with a cruel glibness states the final balance for his sister: "you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad." In the end, the world of raw emotions and authentic life has collapsed upon itself just as it was bursting through the silence of everyday life, leaving nothing but the nonchalantly cynical voice of the gambler who will always go for more (rather than seeking a final "winner") without anxiety, without care, and certainly without love.
