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Unit 24: One Act Play: Monekey’s Paw – Discussion on All Spheres of the Text and Questions
The clash between domesticity and the outside world Notes
Jacobs depicts the Whites’ home and domestic sphere in general as a safe, cozy place separate
from the dangerous world outside. The Whites’ house is full of symbols of happy domesticity:
a piano, knitting, a copper kettle, a chessboard, a fireplace, and a breakfast table. But the
Whites repeatedly invite trouble into this cosy world. Sergeant-Major Morris—a family friend,
seasoned veteran, and world traveller—disrupts the tranquillity in the Whites’ home with his
stories of India and magic and warnings of evil.
He gives Mr. White the monkey’s paw, the ultimate token of the dangerous outside world. Mr.
and Mrs. White mar the healthy atmosphere of their home again when they invite the Maw
and Meggins representative inside, a man who shatters their happiness with news of Herbert’s
death. The final would-be invader of the domestic world is Herbert himself.
Mr. White’s terrified reaction to his dead son’s desire for entrance suggests not just his horror
at the prospect of an animated corpse, but his understanding, won from experience, that any
person coming from the outside should be treated as a dangerous threat to the sanctity of the
home.
Groups of three
Jacobs’s story is structured around a pattern of threes. The central force of the story is the
monkey’s paw, which will grant three separate owners three wishes each. The White family
is made up of three people.
Notes Mr. White is the third owner of the paw. (The second owner is Sergeant-Major
Morris; the first owner used his third wish for death.)
Sergeant-Major Morris begins talking about his adventures in India after three glasses of
whisky and urges Mr. White three times not to wish on the paw. The representative from Maw
and Meggins approaches the Whites’ gate three times before he musters up the courage to
walk up the path to their door. Mrs. White orders her husband three times to wish Herbert
alive again before he retrieves the paw. And the reanimated corpse of Herbert knocks three
times before his mother hears him. In addition to permeating the plot, the number three gives
“The Monkey’s Paw” its structure. The story is broken up into three parts, which take place
at three times of day, during three types of weather. Part I occurs in the evening during a
rainstorm. Part II takes place during the morning of a bright winter day. Part III is set in the
middle of a chilly, windy night.
By stressing threes, Jacobs taps into a number of associations that are common in Western
culture. Most relevant to the story is the saying “bad luck comes in threes.” One well-known
trinity, or three, is from Christian theology, in which God is composed of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Disregard for threes has been superstitiously equated with disregard for the
trinity. In the case of Jacobs’s characters, faith in a non-Christian totem (the paw) may be
interpreted as disrespect for Christianity. Finally, because twos commonly occur in nature (we
have two legs, two eyes, two hands, and so on), threes are often used in literature to produce
a perverse or unnatural effect.
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