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The Monkey's Paw Research Paper

649 Words3 Pages

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”-Edgar Allan Poe. All great horror stories represent that quote. There is one story that does not. “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs is not a horror story because there is not a monster, it is not believable, and it does not have a creepy setting. Classic horror stories usually have some sort of a monster in it, whether the monster is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Frankenstein. "The Monkey's Paw" does not have any type of monster in it. One could argue that the paw is a monster but, the paw does not have enough characteristics of a monster to be considered as one. The paw was cursed by an old fakir. The fakir wanted to show that fate controls the way we live. He wanted to show that whomever interfered with fear would have bad things happen to them. We do not know for sure if the paw is magical or not. The incidents that happened could have been merely coincidences and nothing more. A great example of a monster is a monster in “The Tell Tale Heart.” In “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, the main character is a man. This man killed his neighbor and put his dead body under the floorboards. Afterwards, the police came over and the man heard his dead …show more content…

When a scary story is on the cusp of being believable, it is very frightening. When the reader is trying to fall asleep and trying to convince themselves that it is just a story that is supposed to create feelings of worry and fear, that is when it is horror. When the reader is repeating the phrase “It is not real. It is not going to happen” in order to calm themselves down, that is when it is horror. When we believe that the story could happen to us, it makes it all the more scary. “The Monkey’s Paw” is not that type of story. It is not something that makes the reader sleep with the lights on and pull the covers up to their

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The conflict in the story is not only the monkey’s paw but was somewhat Mr. White’s attitude. If he never was that greedy the story would have changed he would have agreed with Morris and burned the monkey’s paw but he didn’t want to do that creating the plot. Any change in the plot could have/ would have altered the course of the story but also altering the theme. In “The Monkey’s Paw,” the downfall of the White family is when they receive the two hundred pounds as a compensation for the son’s death which was actually caused by messing with fate.

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“The monkey’s paw” is a short story written by W.W. Jacobs, which has an extraordinary plot leading to a strong end interfering with fate. This story links with the supernatural to create a tense plot and conflict, making the reader vicious to know what may happen next. As the plot develops, we can see how some characters pass through changes, making the plot complex to understand. The character changes will interfere with the plot as it develops, giving the action shape. This character change is the key to how the story’s plot develops and how the plot is taken to an end.

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