The Monkey's Paw
A family wishes for money. It arrives as compensation for their son's death. Then they wish again.
What happens
Sergeant-Major Morris visits the White family with a talisman. "It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," he says, "a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow." Three men could each have three wishes. He has used his. He throws the paw on the fire. Mr White pulls it out.
White wishes for two hundred pounds. Nothing happens, until a man from the firm of Maw and Meggins arrives to say the Whites' son Herbert is dead, that the firm admits no liability, and that it offers a certain sum in compensation. The sum is two hundred pounds.
Later Mrs White makes him wish again. He raises his hand: "I wish my son alive again." Then a knock sounds at the door, quiet and stealthy, and another. His wife runs to the bolt. He gropes on the floor for the paw and breathes a third and last wish. The knocking stops. Jacobs never shows what stood outside. He ends with the open door: "The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road."
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Why it frightens
It is a story about grief, and grief bargains. Mrs White does not want the thing outside. She wants her boy, and her husband, who knows what the wish will bring, cannot say so. The fear sits in that gap: the person you love asks for what you must refuse.
It also keeps the monster off the page. The knocks grow louder, a chair scrapes, a bolt slides, and the reader, not the author, supplies Herbert as he was after the machinery. Folklore has a name for the wish that goes wrong by being granted exactly: the literal-minded genie. Jacobs makes it a tragedy by giving the wishes a funeral.
On screen
- The Monkey's Paw (2013): a direct adaptation.
- Dead of Night (1974): also released as Deathdream, inspired by the story: a soldier believed killed in Vietnam returns to his family, wrong.
- Pet Sematary (1989): from Stephen King's novel, which he wrote as a retelling of the story: a grave instead of a paw, and what comes back is not what was lost.
- Pet Sematary (2019): the remake of King's novel.
