Plot in The Monkey's Paw

This seems to indicate that Maw and Meggins are textile manufacturers. There would be no cotton anywhere around the Whites' home, but there would be plenty of it flying about inside a textile-manufacturing plant. The mills would be full of complicated machinery, and industrial accidents such as the one that killed Herbert would have been fairly commonplace in those times. As the visitor tells the Whites, the company has no liability to pay any compensation for such accidents.

The tailor's bill reminds Mrs. White of family expenses and this in turn reminds her of the fact that she will need money to replenish the whiskey their visitor drank the night before. Furthermore, the reference to drinking serves to remind the reader that her husband and son were also drinking along with the sergeant-major. When readers learn Herbert was killed in an accident at work, they can either believe the monkey's paw caused it or that the son had stayed up too late and had drunk too much whiskey, so that he was tired and hungover and hence susceptible to injury.

Mr. White must have had a premonition that something bad was going to happen. He was the only one who felt that mummified paw move. He was the only one who saw the "simian" face in the fireplace. He was the one responsible for making the wish. The monkey's paw was his property, since he had asked Sergeant-Major Morris for it and had even paid him a small sum of money.

The first part of the story took place on a dark night full of wind and rain. Now the author opens the second part with the morning sun streaming over the breakfast table. This is to set the stage for the totally unexpected shock Mr. and Mrs. White are about to receive.

This is intended to emphasize how much the mother adores her son and foreshadows her actions in part three of the story. 

Herbert is characterized as being lively and full of fun. This will make the home seem that much more empty and lonely when he dies.

The man is finding it difficult to look at Mr. and Mrs. White as he brings them terrible news.

The passage characterizes women as being impatient by nature.

Does the road look quiet and deserted because Herbert has been whisked back to his grave? Or was it a stranger seeking help who has vanished into the night because there is only a tiny section of the road illuminated by a flickering gas lamp? What would have happened if Mrs. White had been able to get that door open before her husband made his last wish?

It couldn't have been Herbert knocking at the door in the middle of the night. But who else could it have been? Mrs. White had been standing at the window looking down the road in the direction of the cemetery while holding a lighted candle. Some stranger coming up the road from that direction would have seen that light "throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls of the bedroom." The stranger might have had something important to communicate to the people who lived in the only other occupied house in the new development but found they were not at home. He would have kept pounding at the Whites' door because he knew there was someone in the upstairs bedroom. He may have given up just at the time Mr. White made his third wish. But where could the stranger have gone? Obviously a flickering gas lamp would only have illuminated a small section of the road, and the stranger could have passed out of the circle of light.

Mr. White does not think of wishing that his son were alive again and exactly the same as he was before. It is noteworthy that the first wish was modest, but the second wish is outrageous. The Whites have gone from being modest and skeptical to sorcerers conspiring to raise the dead.

Readers can imagine how Herbert would look after being mangled by machinery and then lying in his grave for ten days. Even his cheerful personality would have completely vanished after his excruciating experiences.

Here, another light could attract the hypothetical lost motorist and provide an alternative possibility to the idea that the horribly mangled Herbert returned from the dead in response to his father's second wish.

The description will strengthen the alternative possibility that when the knocking at the door begins and grows louder and more insistent, it could only be a motorist in need of help, possibly completely lost in this desolate area and in need of directions. Mr. White established early in the story that there were only two occupied houses in this "out-of-the-way" new development. The hypothetical motorist might have tried the other house and found no one home; but he would be more insistent about getting someone to answer the door here because he had seen the light in the window and because it was his only hope. Mrs. White was standing right at the upstairs window holding a lighted candle in a china candlestick, and the light "was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls." The motorist could hardly miss seeing it because it was right at the upstairs window and would have been the only light in all the darkness in this desolate region.