“The Monkey’s Paw” was written by W.W. Jacobs and first appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine (Sept. 1902). Jacobs (1863-1943) was a British civil servant who was popular in his lifetime as a writer. He wrote a great deal of fiction, both supernatural and humorous, and in his life virtually created the comic nautical short story. Despite this, he is primarily remembered now for just “The Monkey’s Paw,” which is one of the two or three most anthologized of all horror stories. It is an old gem of a horror story, and yet long familiarity has not dimmed its luster.

The Whites, father, mother, and adult son Herbert, are waiting up one night for their guest to arrive. He does: Sergeant Major Morris, fresh from twenty-one years of service in India. After he drinks a few tumblers of whiskey he opens up and begins telling them about his experiences. Mr. White asks about “old temples and fakirs and jugglers...what was that you started telling me the other day about a monkey’s paw or something...?”¹ Morris is reluctant to talk about it, but eventually produces the monkey’s paw and tells them about the spell put on it by “an old fakir...he wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.”² Herbert asks why the major hasn’t used his three wishes. “The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is wont to regard presumptuous youth: ‘I have,’ he said quietly, and his blotchy face whitened.’”³ Morris tells how the first man to own the paw used his third wish for death, and, visibly angry with the paw–“it has caused enough mischief already”⁴–Morris throws it in the fire. Mr. White retrieves it, and Morris tells him, “If you keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again like a sensible man.”⁵ Morris tells them how to use the paw. After Morris leaves the Whites discuss how to use it. Mr. White, unsure what to wish for, asks for two hundred pounds–but when he does he is unnerved, since the paw “moved....as I wished, it twisted in my hand like a snake.”⁶ Nothing happens, and the Whites go to sleep. Herbert stays up, looking at the fire, and “seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it with amazement.”⁷

The next day the Whites are visited at their home by a man from Maw and Meggins, the company which owns the factory in which Herbert works. The man tells the Whites that Herbert was in an accident–“he was caught in the machinery”⁸–and that, to compensate the Whites for their loss, they will receive £200. The Whites mourn, but a week later it occurs to Mrs. White to use the monkey’s paw to wish Herbert alive again. Mr. White is afraid:

The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. ‘He has been dead ten days, and beside he–I would not tell you else, but–I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?’

‘Bring him back,’ cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. ‘Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?’⁹

Mr. White wishes that his son was alive again. The pair wait for hours. That night Mr. White hears “a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible”¹⁰ on the front door. Mrs. White wants to open the door, but Mr. White is terrified, and before Mrs. White can shoot the bolt on the door and open it Mr. White “frantically breathed his third and last wish.”¹¹ When Mrs. White opens the door nothing is there.

“The Monkey’s Paw” is widely anthologized and is among the most famous of all horror stories. But because the story is so familiar many readers will not have actually read the story in many years. This is unfortunate, because the story remains powerful despite having become a cliché. Jacobs takes the lighter approach to the material that is a sign of magazine work in the 1890s. The prose is spare and the dialogue naturalistic. The story has much less of the ponderous, adjective-heavy style of earlier writers like Bulwer Lytton. But despite the dialogue style and the casual conversations and the easy narrative approach, there is a grave feel to the atmosphere of the story. Even first-time readers will know that something bad is coming, even if they do not know what it is. That atmosphere, combined with Jacobs’ descriptive style, makes for a subtly creepy story. Jacobs describes nothing frightening directly, although he devotes close attention to minor details which add to the scare. Instead, everything is described indirectly, so that the reader is forced to intuit what Herbert’s body looked like or what was knocking at the door. This all leads to an ending which, despite its familiarity, can still chill with the best of horror stories.

Print: W.W. Jacobs, The Monkey’s Paw and Other Tales of Mystery and the Macabre. Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1998.

¹ W.W. Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” in The Lady of the Barge (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1902), 32.

² Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 33.

³ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 33.

⁴ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 34.

⁵ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” 35.

⁶ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 37-38.

⁷ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 38-39.

⁸ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 44.

⁹ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 48-49.

¹⁰ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 51.

¹¹ Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw,” 53.