The Monkey's Paw Rhetorical Analysis

As an author, Stephen King has developed the skill of alluring writing. Stephen King’s word choice is not common, but eccentric and assists in making a story enticing to read. Alike Stephen King, W.W Jacobs also uses quality word choice and descriptive adjectives for his stories, one of them is “The Monkey’s Paw.” In “The Monkey’s Paw” W.W Jacobs uses word choice and descriptive adjectives to develop the theme. The story, ¨The Monkey's Paw¨ uses descriptive adjectives. One example of that being, ¨White haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire.” The reader can infer it is cold outside, to have a fire, it is often cold and that the old lady is calm, maybe at ease. This helps develop the plot with descriptive adjectives by painting a picture that the reader can share sight of with the author.

The author developed the plot by saying, “Then all three burst into laughter as the sergeant-major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm” This helps use word choice by stating how they ¨burst into laughter¨, this helps the reader understand that they all must have thought whatever they were laughing at was quite funny, while the sergeant-major believed it was serious and seeing how naive they were, he must have been alarmed. Another example of word choice would be, ¨The old man stared nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs.” This can help the reader picture that although he had wished for something that he hadn’t completely believed in, he was still nervous. The old man must of partially believed the paw was real or the thought of it being real scared him even more. In “The Monkey’s Paw” W.W Jacobs uses word choice and descriptive imagery to develop the theme. As an author, W.W Jacobs has developed the skill of alluring writing by using descriptive words. W.W Jacobs also uses quality word choice for his stories, one of them being “The Monkey’s