Use Of Literary Elements In The Monkey's Paw By W. Jacobs

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To have a great story, it has to make use of literary elements to give detail and depth to a story. Stories can leave a feeling or thought that can make the reader think about what they just read. Making use of literary elements can help give hints to what the story is gonna be about or what is going to happen in the future.The four stories that our class read use these two elements and a few of the stories can almost tell the entire story just in the first two pages. Two of the most well used literary elements is symbolism and foreshadowing. One of the literary elements used in the stories was symbolism that was used in almost every story. Symbolism itself is to represent a meaning or feeling. Within the story “the Monkey's Paw” by W. W. Jacobs, used the chess game to …show more content…

Foreshadowing means to hint towards the future, almost telling what is going to happen in the story. A great use of foreshadowing was in the story “the monkey’s paw”, a quote that was a great use of foreshadowing is “Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late”(Jacobs, 50). When Mr. White has noticed that he made a mistake but he was too late to notice it before it was too late. In the story, Mr. White made a wish, but due to not being specific enough in his wish after learning what would happen in the first wish, he wished for his son back but he didn't come back normally. He came back as the way he died, his body still ruined and mangled by the machine that killed him, almost zombie like. Yet another use of foreshadowing is in the story, “The Lottery”, in the story, it describes that when everyone was getting to the center, the kids were gathering rocks in the center of the town. The rocks themselves are foreshadowing to the end of the story where the rocks are used to stone the person that won the lottery. Foreshadowing is a great use for adding detail to a story making it better for the