Monkey's Paw Paranormalism

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“The Monkey’s Paw” is the scarier story due to how it feels suspenseful, and a bit uncanny while retaining a realistic atmosphere, and having concise rising action. It’s the most effective at this since it uses symbols masterfully. It has paranormal elements that make it frightening while still sounding like a legitimate possible, realistic situation. While on the other hand “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” fall short where “The Monkey’s Paw” excels, here’s how.
While “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” are good stories they aren’t as good as “The Monkey’s Paw” and by the end, you’ll think the same thing. First, the paranormal events in “The Monkey’s Paw” are realistic and believable in the beginning as you can clearly and undoubtedly see here “…interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old man … “It moved”” (Jacobs, 113) this event is believable since the paw moved, but the general event was very tame compared to the other stories. As for symbolism, the paw itself is a symbol, representing greed, this quote proves this very easily ““Two hundred pounds” was the answer” (Jacobs, 113) this quote is flat out showing us greed when Mr. White …show more content…

So “The Black Cat” has a very disorganized rising and lowering action and for me, it was hard to define the climax due to the fact that there are so many moments that are intense. Some of these moments are when the man kills the cat, and the ending or the man finding a new cat. My point being it’s unclear where the climax or rising action is. Despite believing that “The Tell-Tale Heart” is better at this, it does it too quickly. Like “The Black Cat” it doesn’t have a clear rising action, while the climax is easy to find the action is always fluctuating. In conclusion, “The Monkey’s Paw” is the scarier story since it uses symbols and suspense in a very experienced way, all of this while it keeps a realistic