Thursday, October 10, 2019

Which detail from "The Monkey's Paw" is the most clearly an example of foreshadowing?

The Whites are warned against using the monkey's paw early on in the story, when Sergeant-Major Morris visits them and tells him about the find. He says it came from India where it had been enchanted by a holy man, who had sought to prove the power that fate holds in shaping human life. Morris tells them that the monkey's paw has the power to grant three wishes to three different people.
However, Morris is more than simply a source of exposition - Morris himself is a victim of the Monkey's Paw. He refuses to tell them what he wished for, but he does allude to the person had used the monkey's paw before him, and whose last wish had been to die. In their conversation, Morris hesitates to give them the monkey's paw, and at one point even tries to destroy it in the fire. Morris's characterization across this scene establishes the monkey's paw as an object which causes him much distress, and foreshadows the later traumas which will emerge from wishing upon it.


At the beginning of the story, Sergeant-Major Morris arrives at the White residence, and Mr. White asks him to elaborate on the story he once told about a monkey's paw. Sergeant-Major Morris then takes out the monkey's paw and tells the White family its background. Morris says that an old fakir put a spell on it to show that fate ruled people's lives. He also mentions that the spell granted three different people three wishes each. The most explicit example of foreshadowing takes place after Herbert asks Sergeant-Major Morris what happened to the first person who was granted three wishes. Morris responds by saying,

"The first man had his three wishes. Yes...I don’t know what the first two were, but the third was for death. That’s how I got the paw" (Jacobs, 2).

The fact that the first recipient of the monkey's paw wished to kill himself foreshadows that the paw is cursed and evil. Mr. and Mrs. White soon discover that the monkey's paw is cursed when their son is killed after they wish for two-hundred pounds to pay off their mortgage.

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