The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs: Free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB Download
The Monkey’s Paw
📖 Click to Read the Opening Pages Online Preview
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge opens:
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.
“Hark at the wind,” said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.
“I’m listening,” said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand. “Check.”
A man on a plank above a river, his hands tied and a rope round his neck. Download the complete story.
Download Full EPUB1902
~4,000 words (estimated)
Approx. 13 minutes
Standalone
Laburnam Villa, England
3 parts
EPUB · AZW3 · KEPUB
340 KB (EPUB) · 371 KB (AZW3) · 343 KB (KEPUB)
Public domain in the United States
Project Gutenberg transcription
This page offers a summary and analysis of The Monkey’s Paw, together with the complete text. The Monkey’s Paw is a short horror story by W. W. Jacobs, first published in 1902 in his collection The Lady of the Barge. On a wet night in a remote English house, the White family — Mr and Mrs White and their grown son Herbert — receive a visit from Sergeant-Major Morris, an old soldier home from India. He has brought a dried monkey’s paw, bewitched by a fakir so that three men may each have three wishes, and he warns them plainly that the thing brings sorrow. The paw ends up in Mr White’s pocket anyway. His first wish, for two hundred pounds, seems to fail, and Herbert jokes about it over breakfast. By evening the money has arrived — from the company that crushed Herbert in its machinery.
The rest of the story is a study in what a second wish costs. Mad with grief, Mrs White demands that her husband use the paw to bring their son back; he makes the wish in terror; and then, far down the road, something begins to knock. Jacobs never shows what is outside. He gives the reader a chain, a bolt drawn stiffly back, a chair wedged against the door, and an old man on his hands and knees in the dark, groping for the paw so that he can wish the thing away again. The knocking stops; the door opens onto an empty street. The story is about fate and the temptation to interfere with it, about grief that will bargain, and about a horror that is almost entirely domestic. The text is available via the Project Gutenberg #12122 transcription this page is based on.
The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs: Summary, Characters & Themes
This summary and analysis of The Monkey’s Paw follows the story as Jacobs told it. W. W. Jacobs (1863–1943) was a London-born writer who spent his working life in the Post Office Savings Bank and his spare evenings writing comic stories about barge crews, clerks and henpecked husbands. He published a dozen collections of them, and he is remembered today almost entirely for the one story that is not funny. It appeared in 1902 in The Lady of the Barge and Other Stories, and within a generation it had become a stage sketch, then a film, then the template for every “be careful what you wish for” horror story written since.
The premise is simple and folkloric. A dried paw from India has a spell on it: three separate men may each have three wishes, and the fakir who made it meant to prove that “fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow.” Morris has had his three. He tells the Whites that the first man’s third wish was for death, and that he does not know what the first two were. That is the whole warning, and it is enough. When the old man asks what he would wish for now, if he could, the soldier says only: “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Then he throws the paw on the fire, and Mr White, with a cry, snatches it off.
The first wish is for two hundred pounds, the exact sum needed to clear the mortgage. It is made almost as a joke, with Herbert playing solemn chords on the piano, and the only immediate result is that the paw appears to twist in the old man’s hand — “like a snake.” Nothing else happens. The next morning is bright and prosaic; Herbert goes to work; his mother laughs at her husband’s credulity; and then a well-dressed stranger stands at the gate, unable for a long moment to come in. He is from Maw and Meggins, and he has come with a compensation offer. Herbert has been caught in the machinery. “He was the only one left to us,” Mr White says, and the company’s man explains that they admit no liability, but wish to present a certain sum. It is two hundred pounds. The old man smiles faintly, puts out his hands like a blind man, and drops to the floor.
After that the story changes gear quietly. The Whites bury their son in a new cemetery two miles away and come home to a house that has nothing to say. A week later Mrs White wakes her husband in the dark with the second wish: “Bring him back.” He protests, then weakens, then goes down to the parlour with no candle, afraid on the stairs that the wish might already have taken effect. He wishes his son alive, and the paw falls to the floor. Nothing answers. They lie listening to the clock, a creaking stair, a mouse in the wall — and then a knock so quiet that it is almost polite. It comes again. It comes a third time.
The last pages are Jacobs’s real achievement, and they work by refusing to describe the thing at the door. Mrs White is certain it is Herbert; she fights her husband to reach the bolts; she wedges a chair under the handle and calls for help with the top bolt, because her arms are too short. The old man is on his hands and knees in the passage, feeling for the paw, hearing each knock like a shot. He finds it just as the door begins to open and breathes his third and last wish. The knocking stops instantly. The door swings in on a cold wind, his wife lets out a long wail of disappointment, and the street lamp opposite shines on a quiet, deserted road. What was on the step is left where all the best horror is left: outside the frame, and in the reader’s head. The closing note is not a moral but a warning about the whole machinery of wishing — that a grief which demands a miracle has already given up on accepting the world it was given. The text on this page follows the Project Gutenberg #12122 transcription of the 1902 collection.
Historical Context
Jacobs wrote in the years when the British Empire’s Indian connection was a stock furniture of popular fiction: retired colonels, sergeant-majors with liver, temples, fakirs and curses brought home in a trunk. The paw is that furniture turned against the drawing room. Morris’s stories of “wars and plagues and strange peoples” are the evening’s entertainment until one of them turns out to be true.
The story also belongs to the great age of the English ghost story. M. R. James had begun publishing his antiquarian horrors in the 1890s, and the short Christmas tale was a magazine staple. Jacobs’s innovation was to set his horror in a suburban villa with a mortgage, a chess board and a son who commutes — a world his readers recognised, not a castle.
The industrial accident is equally period-accurate. Maw and Meggins is a private firm, and its man is careful to say that it admits no liability and is “merely obeying orders”; the two hundred pounds is compensation, not damages. In 1902 there was no welfare state to fall back on, and a family that lost its only wage-earner faced exactly the arithmetic that the wish was meant to solve.
Key Characters & Literary Archetypes
- Mr White: is the gambler of the family: he plays chess with reckless moves and he takes the paw when he is told to burn it. He is the one who wishes, and the one who has to live with the wish, and his last act — crawling in the dark to undo his own miracle — is the closest the story comes to a hero.
- Mrs White: is the story’s engine. Her grief is not weaker than her husband’s but it refuses to accept the fact of death, and she is willing to drag her son back into a world that mutilated him. She is also the one who says the line the whole story is built on: “Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?”
- Herbert White: is the family’s comic voice and its first casualty. He teases his father about the paw, plays chords on the piano as the wish is made, jokes about the money being tied up in a bag on the bed, and is dead before the next scene. The humour matters: it is what the wishes take away.
- Sergeant-Major Morris: is the returned traveller of folklore, the man who has been somewhere else and come back changed. He does not sell the paw, he tries to burn it, and he warns the Whites as clearly as he can without refusing to hand it over. He is the story’s Cassandra, and he is not listened to.
Core Literary Themes
- Fate versus free will: The fakir’s spell exists to show that fate rules, and the story proves it by making every wish arrive through ordinary causes. There is no ghost in the machinery; there is a machine, and a boy who was sent to it. The horror is that the wish did not need magic to work.
- Grief and bargaining: The second wish is the one that makes the story unbearable, because it is not greed. Mrs White is not asking for money or power; she is asking to have her child back, and the story lets the reader feel exactly why that is the most dangerous wish of the three.
- Domestic horror: Jacobs keeps the supernatural offstage and fills the house with ordinary sounds: a door banging upstairs, a mouse in the wall, a chair scraping in the passage. The most frightening object in the story is a front door, and the most frightening action is drawing a bolt.
Why Download Our Custom E-Reader Edition of The Monkey’s Paw?
This page offers the complete 1902 text in a clean, reflowable edition — all three parts, from the chess game by the fire to the empty road outside the gate, with nothing abridged or modernised. The dialogue and the punctuation follow the Project Gutenberg transcription of the first book appearance.
The download is DRM-free and comes in three formats from a single page: EPUB for most readers, AZW3 for older Kindles, and KEPUB for Kobo devices. Each file contains the full story, a title page and a linked table of contents, so the three parts are easy to move between.
The guide above is here for readers who want the context as well: the imperial-Indian furniture of the tale, the industrial accident behind the two hundred pounds, and the door that Jacobs deliberately never opens. Read the story first if you can; the analysis will still be here afterwards.
- Project Gutenberg transcription, via Project Gutenberg #12122
- Formats included EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB, DRM-free, with a linked table of contents.
- Reading time About 13 minutes at a steady pace.
- Best read In one sitting, at night, with the door shut.
- The Fall of the House of Usher — free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB
- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge — free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB
- The Yellow Wallpaper — free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB
Chapter summaries
Jacobs divides the story into three numbered parts. The first sets the scene and makes the first wish; the second delivers its price; the third is the night of the second and third wishes. The summaries below follow that order.
- Part I — The paw: On a cold, wet night at Laburnam Villa, Mr White loses at chess to his son Herbert while Mrs White knits. Sergeant-Major Morris arrives from India with stories and whiskey, and eventually with the monkey’s paw: a mummified thing enchanted by a fakir so that three men may each have three wishes. Morris has had his; the first man’s third wish was for death. He throws the paw on the fire, White snatches it back, and Morris warns him to let it burn.
- Part I — The first wish: After supper, Herbert persuades his father to wish for two hundred pounds to clear the house. White holds the paw up and makes the wish; it twists in his hand like a snake and he drops it. No money appears. Herbert jokes that it will be found in a bag on the bed, and goes up to bed; the old man sits by the dying fire and sees a horrible, simian face in the coals.
- Part II — Maw and Meggins: The next morning is bright and ordinary, and the paw is left on the sideboard with contempt. Herbert goes to work. In the afternoon a well-dressed stranger hesitates at the gate, comes in, and explains that he is from Maw and Meggins: Herbert has been caught in the machinery, and the firm, admitting no liability, wishes to present a sum in compensation. It is two hundred pounds. Mr White drops to the floor.
- Part III — The second wish: A week after the funeral Mrs White wakes in the night and demands that her husband wish their son alive again. He refuses, then weakens; the horror of what Herbert’s body looked like is said out loud, and she answers that she does not fear the child she nursed. White goes down in the dark, finds the paw, and makes the wish. The paw falls to the floor. Nothing happens, and they lie listening to the house.
- Part III — The knocking: A quiet knock at the front door, then another, then a third. Mrs White is certain it is Herbert and fights her husband to get to the bolts; the old man is on his hands and knees in the passage searching for the paw. She wedges a chair under the handle and calls for him to help with the top bolt. The chair scrapes back; the door begins to open; White finds the paw and breathes his third wish.
- Part III — The empty road: The knocking stops at once. The door opens on a cold wind, Mrs White gives a long wail of disappointment and misery, and her husband runs down to the gate. The street lamp flickers opposite, and the road outside is quiet and deserted. The story ends there, with the third wish unspoken and the thing on the step left to the reader.
The Monkey’s Paw: Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Monkey’s Paw about?
Who wrote The Monkey’s Paw?
When was The Monkey’s Paw first published?
What are the three wishes in The Monkey’s Paw?
Is The Monkey’s Paw a ghost story?
What does the monkey’s paw symbolise?
How long does it take to read The Monkey’s Paw?
Is there a free EPUB of The Monkey’s Paw?
Part of: Gothic & Horror Classics · Classic Books by Length
