Written by William Wymark Jacobs in 1901, "The Monkey's Paw" is a timeless story that continues to fascinate, and horrify, audiences. In brief summary, "The Monkey's Paw" is a tale of 3 wishes being granted, but there is a cost that must be paid for those wishes. The payment comes in unexpected forms.
As children, we've heard the stories of the genie and the magic lamp. Anyone familiar with Disney's version of "Aladdin" knows full well that there are consequences for making wishes. What Jacobs does with the idea of consequences is a chilling reminder that you should not wish for what you don't have.
This story has inspired quite a few other creative pieces of literature, television, movies, and even cartoons! Check out this partial list, taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw:
- The story's theme was one of the inspirations for Stephen King's novel, Pet Sematary. The Jacobs story had previously been mentioned in his novel The Dead Zone and the novella, Apt Pupil.
- One of the stories from The Simpsons Halloween special, Treehouse of Horror II, has the same name, and is clearly a parody of this story.
- The Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode "The Tale of the Twisted Claw" is based on the story, with the main characters being two school kids who receive a vulture's claw from a witch they pranked.
- In an episode of Billy and Mandy, called Wishbones, Billy and Mandy find a wishing skull, and all of the wishes go wrong in terrible ways.
- In the Manga xxxHOLiC, a teacher buys the monkey's paw from the character Yuuko, even though she is advised against it. The monkey's paw actually gives five wishes in this story arc, but all have negative effects, each one more serious than the last.
- Industrial/goth band the Electric Hellfire Club released a song called "The Monkey's Paw" on their album "Witness."
- The X-Files episode 'Je Souhaite' features a jinniyah (i.e., a female genie) who will grant three wishes to whomever possess a magic rug to which she is bound. The story is yet another take on 'The Monkey's Paw' since the results of these wishes are mailicious at worst and, at best, ironic twists on the intent of the wish. For example, Fox Mulder's wish for 'peace on earth' ends with Agent Mulder alone in a world devoid of all life.
- In The Sims 2 for consoles, when a player selects Search Couch while sitting on a sofa, he can find a Mysterious Zombie Monkey Paw.
- Look at The Monkey's Paw at IMDB - there is a version slated for 2008 release! http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=Monkey%27s+Paw
As a high school English teacher, I have assigned this story to students who are studying irony and working on context clues or vocabulary development. I have also read the story aloud to groups for a Halloween treat. This website is in part dedicated to them. We've talked about what would make the story a little more accessible to them and that's what I tried to do in this annotated version of the story. I have also included an audio file of me reading the story.
For more details about W. W. Jacobs or the story, check out these links:
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