Outsmarting the Monkey's Paw

Outsmarting The Monkey’s Paw

In W.W. Jacobs’ short story The Monkey’s Paw, Mr. and Ms. White, alongside their son, are visited by Sergeant-Major Morris, an old friend who served in India. As they converse, Mr. White asks the sergeant about a monkey’s paw he had spoken of before. As soon as the topic is mentioned, Morris immediately tries to dismiss it as “nothing worth hearing,” but the White family’s curiosity is piqued, and they continue to ask him about it. Eventually, he shows them a dried monkey paw, which he explained was created by an old fakir to show the power of fate and warn against interfering with it. Morris attempts to dissuade them from using the monkey paw, even hurling it into a flame, but the family still requests it. As Mr. White mulls over what wish to make, he eventually decides on asking for 200 pounds. Much to the old man’s surprise, the monkey’s paw twists in his hand, causing him to drop it in surprise. However, the family still thinks nothing much of the monkey’s paw as no money materializes.

Unfortunately, the next morning Mr. and Ms. White are visited by a man from the company their son worked at. He informs them that their son was killed by the machinery at the factory, and gives them 200 pounds as compensation, much to their horror. As the couple mourn the loss of their son, burying the body in a nearby cemetery, Ms. White realises they still have the monkey’s paw, and excitedly urges her husband to wish their son back to life. Mr. White is opposed to the plan, but makes the wish due to his wife’s insistence.

Nothing happens for a while, but eventually, they hear a knocking at the door, and Ms. White scrambles to let what she believes to be their resurrected son in. However, Mr. White, fearing whatever waits outside their door, scrambles to find the monkey’s paw once more and wishes one last time. The banging on the door ceases, and no signs remain of whatever was outside.

Obviously, The Monkey’s Paw had a terribly negative impact on the White family. The moral of the story seems to be to warn against trying to manipulate fate, but in this blog I will choose to completely ignore that moral and attempt to create wishes that successfully control my fate.

The first step in doing so is to analyze everything we know about the monkey’s paw. We know that the paw was created by a holy man to show that “fate ruled people’s lives and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow.” It is stated that “He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.”

From this information, we understand the paw’s motive. It was made to prove that trying to control fate only led to sorrow. From this information, we can conclude that the paw will try and punish you for using it. Based on what happens further on in the story, we can conclude that it does so by twisting the wish into happening but not in the way the wisher intended. The father gets 200 pounds, but only because his son dies. We can assume that the son is resurrected, but may have come back differently in a negative way. 

Interestingly, if we assume the third wish was to kill the son once more, it is notable that nothing bad seems to come from that wish. Whatever is knocking on the door disappears, and nothing additionally bad seems to happen. This might imply that reverting a wish might not create additional harms.

Additionally, it might also be helpful to attempt to get more information out of the two previous owners of the monkey’s paw. What exactly did they wish for? What happened as a consequence? Unfortunately, we can not give the monkey’s paw to several other people and study what happens, since we are the third owner, and the paw can only give wishes to 3 people.

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue with Mr. White’s wishes are that they weren’t specific enough. He asked “I wish for two hundred pounds,” and “I wish my son alive again.” However, as shown by the story, both those wishes can be interpreted very broadly. He does not specify how he gets the two hundred pounds, when he gets it, who he gets it from, etc, and neither does he specify how the son will come back alive, for how long, in what condition, etc. Being as specific as possible will be important in making successful wishes.

You could phrase the requests so specifically that the monkey’s paw wouldn’t have any room to manipulate the request. For example, you could ask “I wish that the next time I buy a lottery ticket, I shall draw the winning number for a million dollars. The ticket shall not be damaged, lost, or stolen, and I shall successfully receive the million dollars, which shall not be taken from me without my freely given consent after the fact except for whatever amount is required by law. I will then be able to use the million dollars to my own discretion, and it shall remain a valid currency with which I can reasonably procure whatever I desire to purchase.” There are probably still a lot of loopholes to be exploited in that request, but if you hire a team of lawyers, scientists, and a bunch of other experts to predict basically anything that could conceivably happen, the monkey’s paw wouldn’t be able to ruin the wish. And just in case, you might want to add a clause saying you can reverse the wish at your discretion.

I hope this blog comes in handy if you ever happen to receive a monkey’s paw that gives magical wishes.

Jaehyun Yi