Literature Review: The Monkey’s Paw
Some lessons from high school really stick you. In sophomore English, we did this unit on short stories with fucked up endings. We started with “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson — it’s about this city lottery but instead of money, the winner gets a lot of free rocks.
And we read that to prove that… some people like corn more than they like Tessie Hutchinson, I guess?
Another one we had to read is “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs, which also doesn’t end great for the mom. People ascribe a moral to it: “Be careful what you wish for, because it just might come true.”
But that’s not what the story is actually about. It’s more like, “Be careful how you wish for stuff, because if you’re not super fucking specific that mummified chimp hand might turn out to be a dick.”
The monkey’s paw is a total piece of shit for no reason at all. Let me jog your memory: A lovely old couple gets a mummified chimp hand that grants wishes, and what do they wish for? Torture their enemies? Infinity money? Ex-ray vision to spy on their neighbors while they’re making whoopie? Nope. $200. To pay off their mortgage.
That’s it! All they can think of to ask for in the whole world is to get out from under the crushing weight of the corrupt financial system. And this piece of ape garbage gives them their measly $200 by KILLING THEIR SON IN AN INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT AND LETTING THEM COLLECT THE INSURANCE.
But what if, and I’m just spitballing here, the paw gave them $200 in literally any other way? That would be pretty rad, wouldn’t it? That’s the worst way he could have done that. If you found a regular-ass genie and said, “I wish I could go to Disneyland” he would give you tickets to Disneyland. The monkey’s paw would be like, “Okay, well your kid has leukemia now, here’s the number of some people who will take you the rest of the way.
Then they wish their son was alive again, which is pretty fucking reasonable given the circumstances. And the paw MAKES HIM A ZOMBIE! That’s not just sloppy, that’s starting to seem like a willful misunderstanding of their wishes.
The monkey’s paw is like a shitty child, waving itself in front of your face saying, “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.”
So the real takeaway from “The Monkey’s Paw” isn’t to be careful what you wish for, it’s to be careful HOW you wish for it. If you find a cursed chimp hand, make it clear to be REALLY FUCKING SPECIFIC.
“I wish for two hundred dollars in untraceable, non-consecutive $20 bills to be accidentally dropped on my doorstep by a person who’s so rich he doesn’t notice it’s missing and who didn’t make his money in a shady way or anything, he’s like a contractor who builds hospitals and he’s always super honest and gets stuff done under budget so he gets lots of jobs, oh and wasn’t going to give it to charity or anything, that was his drinking money for the night and because it’s lost he decides to stay sober and go back home and play Settlers of Catan with his kids who were going through tough times and really needed a strong father figure and some hard lessons about agricultural economies at exactly that moment, and the bar didn’t need it and nothing bad at all happens because of this wish.”
Fuck that one up, Monkeys Paw!
