W. W. Jacobs's story of a dried-up charm, three wishes, and a family who get exactly what they asked for.
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Ten words. Work through the four activities — say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words: reckless · eerie · superstition. Say the right one, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick check (answer from memory first), then one question to discuss.
Outside, the night was cold and wet. Inside the little house at Laburnum Villa, the fire was bright and Mr White was losing at chess to his son Herbert while Mrs White knitted by the fire. They were waiting for a visitor, and when he came he brought the weather in with him: Sergeant-Major Morris, an old friend back from twenty-one years in India.
He talked, and they listened. And after a while Mr White asked about something Morris had mentioned once before — a monkey's paw. Morris said it was nothing, just a bit of what you might call magic, and took a small dried object out of his pocket. Mrs White drew back with a shudder; Herbert laughed and took it.
An old holy man had put a spell on it, Morris said, to prove that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with fate did so to their sorrow. Three separate men could each have three wishes from it. He had had his three. The first man who owned it had used his third wish to ask for death — that was how Morris came to have it. And when Mr White asked why he kept it if it was so terrible, Morris threw it on the fire. Mr White snatched it out of the flames. Better let it burn, said Morris. But the old man had it now, and he wanted to know what to do with it. Morris told him — and told him, twice, to throw it away.
1. Why was the spell put on the paw, and what were its rules?
2. What do we know about the two men who owned it before Mr White?
1. A holy man put a spell on it to show that fate rules people's lives and that anyone who interferes with fate will suffer for it. Three men may each have three wishes.
2. The first owner's third and last wish was for death. Sergeant-Major Morris was the second, and he has had all three of his wishes — but he refuses to say what they were.
After Morris had gone, the family sat around laughing about it. Herbert suggested his father wish to be an emperor. Then, more practically, he said: wish for two hundred pounds — just enough to clear the house — and see what happens.
Half embarrassed at his own foolishness, Mr White held up the paw and wished aloud for two hundred pounds. Then he cried out and dropped it on the floor. It had twisted in his hand, he said, like a snake. Herbert looked at the paw on the floor and said he saw no money, and never would. They laughed, and went to bed, and Mr White sat alone for a while in the dark, seeing faces in the dying fire.
The next morning, in ordinary daylight, the thing looked ridiculous. Herbert went off to work. But that afternoon Mrs White noticed a well-dressed stranger standing outside, hesitating, as though he could not decide whether to come to the door. At last he came in. He was from Maw and Meggins, where Herbert worked. There had been an accident with the machinery. He said it carefully, in stages, the way people do when they are delivering the worst news of someone's life, and when Mrs White finally understood, she asked whether her son was in any pain, and he said no. The firm, he said, wished the family to understand that they admitted no responsibility whatever. But in consideration of their son's services, they wished to present them with a certain sum as compensation. Mr White asked how much. The answer was two hundred pounds.
1. Whose idea was the first wish, and why that amount?
2. What are the two things the man from the firm is careful to say?
1. Herbert's — half joking. Two hundred pounds was exactly the sum needed to pay off the house.
2. That the company admits no responsibility for the accident, and that they wish to give the family a sum of money anyway — two hundred pounds, the exact amount that was wished for.
A week passed, and then another. The house was very quiet. Then one night, in the dark, Mrs White sat up suddenly and said the word that had not been spoken since the funeral: the paw. There were two wishes left. She told her husband to go down and get it and wish their boy alive again.
He argued. He told her the thing was madness. He did not say the thing he was really afraid of, which was what would come back, and what it would be like after ten days. But she was frantic, and he went down in the dark and found it, and wished.
Nothing happened. The candle went out. He came back upstairs and they lay in the cold and the silence, and after a long time he began to feel almost relieved. Then he heard it: a knock at the front door, so quiet he was not sure. Then another. Then a third, loud, filling the whole house. His wife was out of bed and across the room. It was Herbert, she said. She had forgotten the cemetery was two miles away — it had taken him time to walk it. She ran down to open the door.
The bolt was stiff and high, and she could not reach it. She called for a chair. The knocking went on and on. And her husband, on his hands and knees in the dark, was feeling across the floor for the monkey's paw, because he had one wish left. He found it as she drew back the bolt. He gasped out his third and last wish. The knocking stopped at once. He heard the door open, and a cold wind came up the stairs, and his wife gave one long, disappointed cry. He went down to her. The street lamp opposite shone on a quiet and empty road.
1. Why does Mr White argue against the second wish?
2. What almost certainly was the third wish, and why does the writer never tell us?
1. He is terrified of what would actually come back. His son died in machinery ten days earlier, and the father was the only one who saw the body — he could only identify it by the clothing.
2. Almost certainly that whatever was at the door should be gone — that the second wish be undone. The writer never says, because the horror lives entirely in what you imagine was standing outside. Naming it would make it smaller.
This whole story is an argument about cause. Did the paw kill Herbert, or did a machine? The characters never find out, and neither do we — so the language we need is the language of deduction: saying how sure we are about something in the past, when we cannot know for certain.
Your friend's phone has gone missing on a school trip. Complete each sentence with must have, might have or can't have and the verb in brackets.
1. It was in her bag at breakfast and the bag has been open all morning. → "It out." (fall)
2. She was in three different rooms, so nobody is sure. → "She it in the science block." (leave)
3. The museum was closed all day and she never went near it. → "She it there." (lose)
4. Her screen was cracked before the trip started. → "Somebody it earlier in the week." (drop)
1. must have fallen 2. might have left / may have left / could have left 3. can't have lost / couldn't have lost 4. must have dropped
Check 3 again: the temptation is "mustn't have lost". English doesn't do that — the negative of must have is can't have.
Rewrite each piece of evidence as a sentence about the past. Write only the missing words.
1. The kitchen light is on and the back door is unlocked. → "Someone home before us." (certain — get)
2. There are two cups on the table, but only one visitor was expected. → "She a friend with her." (possible — bring)
3. He was on a plane with no signal for nine hours. → "He your message last night." (impossible — see)
4. The ground was completely dry this morning. → "It in the night." (impossible — rain)
5. She knew the answer before the teacher finished the question. → "She the chapter already." (certain — read; then add a two-word softener)
1. must have got 2. might have brought / may have brought 3. can't have seen 4. can't have rained 5. must have read + I suppose / I imagine / I'd say
Notice what the softener in 5 does. It keeps the same deduction but leaves you a way out if you turn out to be wrong — which is how people actually argue.
Two friends have just finished the story and disagree about it. Complete their argument, then read it aloud in pairs.
A: "Come on — the paw obviously did it. He wished for two hundred pounds and the next day his son was dead. That a coincidence." (impossible — be)
B: "It one, though. Factory machines were lethal in 1902. He that morning even if nobody had touched the paw." (possible — be; possible — die)
A: "Then explain the amount. Two hundred pounds exactly. The firm that figure by chance." (impossible — choose)
B: "Or Herbert the figure when he suggested it — it was his yearly wage, near enough. And look at the father. He the paw move at all. He half asleep by the fire." (possible — know; impossible — feel; certain — be)
A: "You the ending, then. Something knocked on that door." (impossible — read — properly)
can't have been · might have been · could have died · can't have chosen · might have known · can't have felt · must have been · can't have read
Neither of them can win, and that is the point of the story. Every single fact in it has two explanations, and Jacobs never puts his thumb on the scale.
Take these into the Speak tab: you'll be arguing exactly this, against the clock.
All of it out loud, against the clock.
Tell the story to someone who has never heard it, in three parts: the visitor and the warning → the wish and the two hundred pounds → the second wish and the knocking. Stop where Jacobs stops — do not explain the ending.
Use at least five key words (talisman, shudder, compensation, superstition, reckless, eerie, omen, frantic, fate, bolt).
One of you argues that the paw caused everything. The other argues that it was all coincidence and grief. Use the evidence in the text, and use the deduction language: must have, might have, can't have.
Then swap sides and do it again in ninety seconds. Arguing the side you don't believe is the exercise.
You are advising someone who has just been given the paw. Talk them through three wishes that could not be twisted — then have your partner try to twist each one anyway. One minute to plan, three to argue.
Prefer not to use your own wishes? Take one of these instead: