Saturday, December 13, 2014

The Monkey's Paw (1902)

by W.W. Jacobs

The Monkey's Paw” by William Wymark Jacobs, is one of the most familiar stories to readers of weird fiction, if not in its original form, then in the multitudes of mutations it has undergone in film and fiction. It’s such a familiar tale that it would be difficult for it not to have lost much of its original power over the last century, but those with the ability to suspend their “delighted glibness,” to use a phrase by Lionel Trilling, will be rewarded by their own imagination in a greater way that all the more explicit horror stories put together. The story actually holds an exalted place in the history of horror fiction. H.P. Lovecraft, in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, introduced his subject by stating that, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” What Jacob’s tale, which Lovecraft called melodramatic but still praised, gives the reader is just that, the unknown on the other side of the door. But Jacobs also succeeds in one of Lovecraft’s other injunctions. “Serious weird stories are . . . made realistically intense by close consistency and perfect fidelity to Nature except in the one supernatural direction which the author allows himself.” These are the reason’s that “The Monkey’s Paw” will always remain one of the classics of the genre.

The story opens on the small home of Mr. and Mrs. White and their son Herbert. It’s a dark and stormy night and, while they are expecting a guest, Mr. White seems surprised when he actually hears the gate and realizes his guest has arrived. Sitting by the fire, Sergeant-Major Morris regales the family with tales from his time in India, and one story in particular Mr. White asks him to tell is about the monkey’s paw. Though initially reluctant, he pulls the shriveled paw from his pocket and tells how an Indian fakir put a spell on the paw that would grant three wishes to three different men. The old magician, he said, “wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow.” Morris is the second to have owned it and when Herbert jokingly asks if he received his three wishes Morris blanches. He confirms that he did and then throws the paw on the fire. Horrified, Mr. White retrieves it quickly, the implication being that he’s intrigued with the possibility of the three remaining wishes. One of the important aspects of the story is that after Morris leaves, Mr. White has difficulty thinking of something to wish for. “It seems to me I’ve got all I want.” This is the real idea that the story revolves around.

Unlike similar tales where the lesson is about greed, here it is simply attempting to interfere with fate. Mr. White is already a happy man and has everything he wants. Fate, it would seem, has been kind to him. When his son suggests that if he could pay off the house that might make him happier, Mr. White goes ahead and wishes for two hundred pounds. The three wait for a moment, but nothing happens, and then he puts the paw on the mantle and they forget about it. The next morning there are jokes about the wish and then Herbert goes to work at his factory job. Later that day a man comes to the door from the company Herbert works for. There’s a small element of foreshadowing when the man comes inside and the couple wants to know what has happened to their son. “‘Is he hurt?’ demanded the mother, wildly. The visitor bowed in assent. ‘Badly hurt,’ he said, quietly, ‘but he is not in any pain.’ ‘Oh, thank God!’ said the old woman, clasping her hands. ‘Thank God for that! Thank—’ She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned upon her and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in the other’s averted face.” Herbert, it turns out, has been caught in a machine and killed, and the company wants to give them two hundred pounds as compensation.

The fascinating thing here is the use of the words themselves. While Mr. White wishes for two hundred pounds, there is a sense in his getting it that the money must come from somewhere. It can’t just appear out of nowhere. In scientific terms it is the idea of conservation of mass, that despite whatever chemical reaction occurs the same number of molecules exist afterward and so nothing is lost. But further than that, the fakir’s intent of making one pay to interfere with fate makes the attaining of the wish that much more cruel. In the delivery of the news of the death of their son, the man also demonstrate the same kind of twisting of words as he says that Herbert is in no pain, but leaves out the fact that his death is the reason. From here the story marches grimly to its conclusion. Two miles down the road is the cemetery, and the two hundred pounds seemingly a coincidence, paltry compensation for the loss of their son. It is in her grief afterward that Mrs. White suddenly embraces the potential of the monkey’s paw in demanding that her husband bring their son back to life with another wish. But by now the husband knows the way the paw works. He was the one to identify the body and knows that this is the wrong thing to do. “He has been dead ten days, and besides he-—I would not tell you else, but—-I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?” Nevertheless, the wife is not to be denied this chance to get her son back.

          He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The
          talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son
          before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he
          found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way round the
          table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome
          thing in his hand.

It is this thought, of his son still mangled by the machinery and yet knocking on the door for his eager wife to let in, that accounts for the dramatic conclusion. It’s still a story that can pack a lot of punch if the reader allows it to. Stephen King even devotes a section of his book Danse Macabre to the importance of “The Monkey’s Paw” as a horror archetype in its ability to evoke terror, the finest of the fear emotions. “We actually see nothing outright nasty . . . It’s what the mind sees that makes these stories quintessential tales of terror. It is the unpleasant speculation called to mind when the knocking on the door begins in the latter story and the grief-stricken old woman rushes to answer it. Nothing is there but the wind when she finally throws the door open . . . but what, the mind wonders, might have been there if her husband had been a little slower on the draw with that third wish?”

In addition to the plot itself, there are some nice atmospheric touches to the story as well. When Mr. White is making his first wish he drops the paw on the floor when he feels it moving in his hand. “‘It moved,’ he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor. ‘As I wished, it twisted in my hand like a snake.’” Then later, when he is sitting alone watching the fire die, he began “seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement . . . His hand grasped the monkey’s paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went to bed.” There is also the most chilling part of the story, for me, and I’m not sure it was even meant to be. After wishing their son alive and nothing immediately happens, the couple goes to bed, the wife in disappointment, the husband with relief. But when they both hear the knocking on the door, the wife utters the most disturbing line in the story: “ ‘It's my boy; it’s Herbert!’ she cried, struggling mechanically. ‘I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door.’” The thought of the formerly dead son shambling along the road from the cemetery two miles away is absolutely breathtaking. What makes it so, as King would say, is the fact that it is not explicitly shown in the story.

W.W. Jacobs was primarily known as a humor writer, but like many writers of the era he did essay several ghost stories as well and they are collected in his book, The Lady of the Barge. RKO produced a version of his most famous story in 1933 when they were riding high on the success of King Kong. Like that film, it was also directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, and starred Ivan F. Simpson, Louise Carter and C. Aubrey Smith, but much to the dismay of fans it is now considered a lost film. The story was also filmed a couple of times during the silent era and again in 1948 by the aptly named Butcher’s Film Service, for television in 1965 by Alfred Hitchcock for his television program, and most recently in 2013 starring Stephen Lang and Charles Dutton. Like Dracula and Frankenstein, the entrenchment of the story into popular culture does not diminish its importance. In fact, it reinforces it. It’s a short tale but, given a leisurely read, “The Monkey’s Paw” still has the power to terrify over a century later.

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