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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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Thesis: In The Monkey's Paw by W.W Jacobs, the realistic essence of the monkey's paw made it fundamentally creepy. Point 1: The monkey's paw is a symbol for inclination for greed, exposing our superior wants as people, even the most humble. Point 2: Consequences for the actions of those using the paw develops the image of regret and fear. Point 3:

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