The Monkey's Paw
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The Monkey's Paw is a short story by W.W. Jacobs, written in 1902. In the story, the paw of a dead monkey is a talisman that grants the possessor three wishes, but the wishes come with an enormous price.
The story is based on traditional stories in which, whatever the way the wishes are granted, there are always three. The first wish is made carelessly; it is granted, but in a horrific manner. In the W.W. Jacobs story, the wish is for wealth, but it comes in the form of a payment for the violent death of a loved one. The second wish is made to try to correct the damages of the first wish and the third wish is made in despair when the darker implications of the "corrective" second wish become evident.
At the end, only the first wish stands, and the other two wishes are wasted, cancelling each other out to prevent a greater horror.
In another sense, such stories resemble Faust stories, in which there is no way to craft a wish finely enough to prevent the Devil from thwarting the wisher.
In popular Media
- A one act play based on the story was written by Louis N. Parker, first performed in 1907.
- The story's theme was one of the inspirations for Stephen King's novel, Pet Sematary. The Jacobs story had previously been mentioned in his novel The Dead Zone and the novella Apt Pupil.
- One of the stories in The Simpsons season three Halloween special has the same name, and is clearly inspired by this story.
- In many rewritings of this story, the final wish typically has the person in possession of the paw wishing he had never found the paw, usually because it was unavailible or that a person they dislike had found the paw instead.
External link
- The text of The Monkey's Paw (http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/mnkyspaw.htm)es:La pata del mono