The Monkey's Paw

When the wish is made there is a description of what each person is doing. The description of the family creates a clear picture in the reader's mind, right after the wish is made. The writer describes sounds to create a new disturbing atmosphere. The sounds are "a crash from a piano" and "a shuddery cry from the old man.". It is like in a movie, a scary part comes up and they put scary music on. The music makes it tense for you and you imagine and wonder what is going to happen next. "The sound of the door banging upstairs", "the wind was higher than ever" then "unusual silence". The boy glances at the dying fire, he feels as if he is going to be dead the next day.

The next day the White family expect their son to come back home from work. Instead of their son a stranger is seen outside. The stranger was peering in, in an undecided fashion at the house. Three times he paused at the gate and then walked off again, the parents feel he is acting strange. What the writer is showing, he is making the stranger appear nervous, it would also get the Whites get nervous and it also creates tension for the reader. When the man says something about Mrs White's son, she asks if he is all right, the visitor bowed in assent, as if " badly hurt"," but he is not in any pain". The writer makes the reader think that the son is OK. When you realise that he is dead it creates a sense of shock for the characters and the reader, "he was the only one left to us", the White's say, they are clearly indicating that they had more children but they all died and Herbert was the only one left. In the first five pages of the book, it only covers one day. On page 40, After the death of Herbert, the story covers a whole week in only a few lines. The writer does this because there is a lot to tell the readers, on the first day and allows us to get to know the characters. If we didn't know the characters, we wouldn't care about the death of Herbert. In the beginning, we know that the family is close because they are all talking with eachother and playing chess. Herbert was the only child left and his parents loved him. The story also shows, that the white family are not greedy because when the family wished, they only wished for £200.00 to pay of their house. Putting a whole week in 14 lines shows that their lives were boring and they had nothing to say and do, they felt empty.

Mrs white remembers the paw, so she feels she should wish for reviving her son. "The paw!", she cried wildly, " The Monkeys Paw". By saying it wildly, it shows the reader how overwhelmed she was. "Wish", "She cried in a strong voice", again "wish" is said in Italics to show how desperate Mrs. White was, to get back her son. In the story there is now a lot of delay in making the wish of bringing back her son, this creates tension. The writer then fills in, which is meant to be silent but he describes sounds, e.g. " A stair creaked and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily in the wall" and the clock ticking. Till the end of the story, the sound effect, which is meant to make the reader scared is a knock at the door. The first knock " is scarcely audible", the second knock is also fairly quiet, but the third knock is a bang, the sound goes through the whole house. "There was another knock and another"; " A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house". Fusillade means the sound of loads of cannons going of. When the tension reaches its height, it is when Mrs. White is unlocking the door, to see who it is and she is on the last latch, its also suspense. But as soon as Mr. White, wishes for whatever is behind the door to go away, all the tension and suspense stops.

In this story, we only get hints of violence, but in a modern day horror story i.e. a Steven king movie, we would see all the violence and blood.

This story was really short, strange and created a lot of tension and suspense but the type of language is different to now (20th century), it was written in the middle of the 19th century. The story is only based in the house of the White family and nowhere else, that tells the reader that the writer wants to keep it a short story. I didn't find this story that exciting because I'm use to books and movies made these days which are much bloody and have graphic detail. I can recognise that it is a cleverly written story and creates a lot of tension through the use of language, but we expect more length these days.

By Raymond Wilfred 11w