Skip to main content

In "The Monkey's Paw," how does the author, W. W. Jacobs, set the mood and the tone?

The author of "The Monkey's Paw," W. W. Jacobs, sets the tone and mood of his story with descriptions of the weather and with foreshadowing. 


In the exposition of his narrative, Jacobs writes that the night is wet and cold. Then, as Mr. White and his son Herbert play chess, Mr. White tries to distract his son because he is a reckless player who moves without thinking through his moves. He says, "Hark at the wind," hoping his son has not noticed his reckless move. 


This recklessness of Mr. White's chess moves foreshadows his impulsive wishes on the monkey's paw, wishes that bring tragic consequences. Added to this, the description of the weather creates a foreboding atmosphere and mood.


This sense of foreboding continues as Mr. White grumbles,



"That's the worst of living so far out," bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; "of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway's a bog, and the road's a torrent."



This tone of foreboding continues with the arrival of Sergeant-Major Morris, an old acquaintance of Mr. White. He pulls from his pocket a monkey's paw, a talisman given him by an Indian fakir. But, as he mentions that he had three wishes granted by this paw, "his tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group." 


Further in the narrative, there is more mention of the weather as stormy, descriptions which continue the suspenseful and dark mood. In the final part of the story, this mood becomes nightmarish as the Whites have been told of their son's horrifying entanglement in a machine at work. Then, when the Whites cannot resign themselves to the death of their son, Mrs. White remembers that they have two more wishes and demands that her husband wish Herbert back to them. However, their inability to think through this wish effects terror as a mood in the end of the story.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more