The Monkey's Paw
Complete textThe White family receives a visitor whose stories include a monkey’s paw said to grant wishes. Around their comfortable fireside, skepticism and curiosity turn the object into a source of speculation. An apparently modest request makes the relationship between wanting something and understanding its price increasingly unsettling.
Continue readingAbout The Monkey's Paw
The ordinary domestic opening gives the supernatural claim a recognizable setting of teasing, chess, and familiar expectations. Its power depends partly on whether events can be treated as coincidence. Follow how the same object changes meaning for different family members, and how the limits of knowledge leave desire and fear competing to explain what should be done.
Reading focus
Watch a familiar household respond differently to an uncertain supernatural promise as desire turns toward consequences no one could confidently predict.
This reading edition contains 3,941 words in 3 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: WW Jacobs. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire.
Contents
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Is this the complete The Monkey's Paw?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 3 sections and 3,941 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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