46 pages • 1 hour read
W.W. JacobsThe Monkey's Paw
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1902A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Monkey’s Paw
The monkey’s paw spurs all the action in the story. Its appearance in the first part of the story conjures imagination and fantasy. Even if the paw has no supernatural power, it causes the Whites to think about what else they might want in their lives. The Whites decide to make a wish using the paw, ignoring Morris’s repeated warnings, and the paw seals their fate.
Mr. White feels the paw move after using it for his first wish. This talisman might be magical if it is capable of inanimate motion. In Part 3, the monkey’s paw again takes center stage as Mrs. White demands to use it, and Mr. White tries to dissuade her. Its power over the imagination of the Whites is impossible to ignore—both believe this paw will make this second wish regarding Herbert’s return possible. The monkey’s paw, whether magical or not, has a hold on the Whites and they come to believe in its powers wholeheartedly.
Outside World
The story begins with a domestic image of a family enjoying each other’s company playing chess and knitting by the fireplace while the outside world is cold and wet. While Mr. White criticizes the home’s remote location, it keeps them removed from this outside modern world. When Morris tells the Whites more about the outside world, Mr. White wishes to experience such things, but Morris reminds him, “Better where you are” (17). The monkey’s paw is an intrusion of this exotic, outside world into the Whites’ home and destroys its inner harmony. After the first wish is made, the narrator says, “Outside, the wind was higher than ever,” signifying the chaos surrounding the White home (64).
In Part 2, Mrs. White sees the representative from Maw and Meggins pacing outside and peering up at the house. He is another symbol of this outside world and its dangers, and he brings the news of Herbert’s death. Mrs. White invites this stranger inside the home to share this news, illustrating that another threshold crossing will bring no good for the Whites. In Part 3, Mrs. White is willing to invite the outside world again into her home—this time in the form of her deceased son. Mr. White stops the intrusion. The third wish stops the outside world from potentially wreaking havoc.
Scary Sounds
Jacobs’s story creates tension using descriptive language, particularly about sound. After the first wish is made, “[a] fine crash from the piano greeted the words” (58). Shortly thereafter, Mr. White and Herbert sit by the fire and the “old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs” (64). As unsettling as this sound is, “a silence unusual and depressing settled upon all three” (64). The silence adds to the ominous nature of the story.
The most menacing sound in the story is the knock at the door in Part 3. After silently waiting and listening for Herbert’s return, Mr. and Mrs. White go to bed. Yet, when Mr. White returns downstairs, he hears a knock “so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible” at the front door (130). The knock punctuates the last few paragraphs of the story, stirring Mrs. White to unlock the front door and Mr. White to find the monkey’s paw. The knock becomes a symbol of Herbert’s return, leaving our imaginations to fill in who or what is making the sound. It becomes a metronome to the action of Mrs. White and Mr. White’s contrasting but equally desperate acts.
