The Monkey’s Paw is a horror short story written by W. W. Jacobs. It talks about a family of three who receive a magical artifact from their friend Sergeant Morris. This artifact has the supernatural ability to bend fate to one’s will, granting three wishes of any kind to the wielder. However, it’s actually a curse, enchanted to bring down catastrophic consequences to the user who dares to mess with fate. The father in this family, Mr White, wishes for money. Yet this money came at the price of their son’s death. Devastated, they wish their son to be revived again. But through fear of the thought that their revival has brought a malformed corpse to their doorstep, they decided to let their son disappear. At first glance, the only distinct theme of the story is the theme of messing with fate, for it is the only one clearly mentioned. However, simmering under the surface are other themes just as crucial to the story as the monkey’s paw. Here are the three main ones.
Human nature can be a curse, and when it is, it is devastating. This story focuses a lot on how human nature can ruin or even destroy us. Our tendency to be greedy, overly curious, lying and taking advantage of others can and is severely harmful to both oneself and others. And in the case of the paw, transferring it to innocent people. Inclusion of this dark human nature both teaches readers a lesson and criticizes humanity while also perfectly fitting the evil plot of the story. In it, Mr White took the paw because of greed and over curiosity, while Morris took advantage of the Whites and tricked them into taking the paw using lies and falsehoods. Despite being warned that the paw was dangerous, Mr White still took it because he was greedy and curious about its power. Morris was using his dark human nature to intentionally make innocent people suffer. If we let our dark side of human nature take over, we will end up harming ourselves and others alike.
Fate controls our lives, it is not to be tampered and messed with. As aforementioned, this theme is definitely the most obvious, and it is one of the key pillars holding up the story. Without it, the plot would collapse. Now, fate is a very wide topic, spanning countries and traditions and myths alike. But whichever specific version fate is supposed to be, the principles are the same: Everyone’s life is predetermined, and we shouldn’t mess with it. Nowadays, people say “we decide our own fate”, “we can change the future”, but highly religious people won’t agree. In the story, the monkey’s paw was enchanted by some religious person so that it can alter people’s fate, but with devastating prices. This shows that the paw was cursed for a reason, and that reason is the main theme of the story: Anyone who messes with fate will suffer severe consequences.
Good writing skills are the keys to making any story more appealing to the reader. Though not a proper theme of the story, it is worth mentioning. Writing skills is what makes readers attracted to one’s story, how we shape our words to create more than just a story, to create an artwork woven from word and phrase usage. Commonly used ones include similes, metaphors, personification, onomatopoeia, symbolism, foreshadowing and suspense. In the story, symbolism, foreshadowing and suspense are mainly used traits that make the story better and are suitable for horror stories. By using symbolism, foreshadowing and suspense, The Monkey’s Paw acquires more horror elements (the element of suspense, where one won’t know what’s going to happen) while also developing themes as well. Writing skills are essential for making a truly beautiful work of literature.
In conclusion, The Monkey’s Paw is a short horror story of how a family’s life was ruined because of an artifact from a supposed friend. We follow the White family as they try to use the magic artifact to alter fate, yet suffer catastrophic consequences for doing so. The story is well written with hidden themes that are crucial to the story and teach readers a lesson. There are three main themes: Human nature can be a curse, and when it is, it is devastating, fate controls our lives, it is not to be tampered and messed with, and good writing skills are the keys to making any story more appealing to the reader. On the surface, this story is just a horror story, but if we look deeper, we will see that it is also criticizing human nature and how it can ruin us, just as the Whites were ruined by theirs. This horror story is built on several different levels, but collapses together to become a piece of well-written fear and criticism.
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