The certain events Essay Example for Free

The certain events Essay In ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ tension is created by seeing how the characters behave to the certain events. For instance, when a man came from Maw and Meggins, Herbert’s place of work, to tell the family of Herbert’s accident, we see that Mrs. White was distraught by this accident, â€Å"She caught her breath, and turning to her slower-witted husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his, and the fact that Herbert was ‘caught in the machinery’ means that his body must have been desecrated which creates the most horrific images. This creates tension and enables the reader to empathise how they must be feeling. Another way in which tension is evoked is by characters being mysterious and withholding information. When the sergeant is asked indirectly whether he has had his three wishes he said quietly, â€Å"I have† and his blotchy face whitened. He is being very secretive as to the wishes he wished but we can guess that there is something wrong about them for he turns white when he talks vaguely of them.  In ‘The Monkey’s Paw the reader is constantly trying to determine whether this paw is powerful or just a part of Mr. White’s ‘fancy’, or whether it will result in good or bad. These attitudes change constantly throughout the story, and all this does is confuse and mislead the reader. The family and the sergeant’s emotions constantly seem to be opposites. When they are discussing the ‘monkey’s paw’, the family are eager to find out about the paw, whereas the sergeant is being very secretive, â€Å"His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absent-mindedly put his empty glass to his lips.†Ã‚  Then later Herbert White cleverly said, â€Å"Well, why don’t you have three, sir?† â€Å"I have†, he said quietly. These two adjectives seem to be opposites, ‘cleverly’ and ‘quietly’. As I have already said, the family constantly change their views on whether the monkey’s paw will work, or whether the sergeant is lying. While the sergeant is talking about the paw, they seem to be taken in by the paw and even take it out of the fire when the sergeant threw it in there. When he told Mr. White to put it back into the fire, Herbert said with pretended horror, â€Å"Likely†. But when they had made the first wish for two hundred pounds, because they did not see the money, they thought â€Å"it must have been [their father’s] fancy† and joked about finding â€Å"the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of you bed†. But when they found out that the first wish had been granted and the disastrous circumstances that was brought with it, they still wanted to use it again to wish Herbert back to life. And at the end of the story, when the disfigured body of Herbert is knocking on their front, although we are not told what Mr. White whished, we can guess that it was for Herbert to return to the dead. This links it to the first man’s wishes. The sergeant said that the first man’s last wish was for death, and this might be, like in this case, for another person. At the beginning of the story, the family believed that the ‘monkey’s paw’ would result in good. They even joke about how two hundred pound might be dangerous and said, â€Å"[It] might drop on his head from the sky†. However, after the death of Herbert, they realise that this paw was magical and sinister.  Because ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is a different kind of story to ‘The Speckled Band’, the reader is mislead in completely different ways. In ‘The Speckled Band’, it misleads the reader by hiding the truth beneath layers of uncertainty and withholding certain information, such as the fact that Dr. Roylott had a snake. In Julia’s dieing words, she screamed out, â€Å"It was the band! The Speckled Band!†. This is a cryptic clue, hinting to the poisonous spotted snake which bit her. The author, Arthur Doyle, deliberately chose these words so to make a mystery, for, if she had said, â€Å"It was the snake† then there would have been no mystery at all.. This was a conscious decision made by the author to deliberately mislead the reader. This seemingly strange clue, only seems to be hinting towards the gypsies with spotted scarves, whom Dr. Roylott allowed to stay in the garden. They play no role in the mystery, hence giving depth to the plot.  Also we are told of the animals he has, a baboon and a cheetah. These seemingly pay no role in the mystery, until Sherlock Holmes later finds a saucer of milk in the Doctors bedroom and then finds out that he also has an extremely poisonous Indian snake. I think that although it gives us background information, Helen Stoner’s first speech which ultimately gives us more information than we need, could be put there to mislead the reader, because we are trying to take in all this information and make our own predictions as to what we think happened. Therefore this would just confuse the reader.  In this speech, we are told that Helen’s sister, Julia, could smell Dr. Roylott’s cigars, because of a small ventilator connecting the two rooms.. However, in the coroner’s report, he mentioned nothing about the ventilator which just misleads the reader. Also, he did not see the two puncture marks made by the snake which would have made the mystery a lot less confusing. Although ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is a story full of mystery and suspense due to the immense tension created, my favourite out of the two is undoubtedly ‘The Speckled Band’ due to its sensational plot, a successful combination of elaborate characters and the intriguing circumstances which we are presented at the beginning of the story. One of the most iconic things about a ‘murder mystery’ is its unique ability to keep the reader guessing until the end of the story until the truth is revealed to us by Sherlock Holmes, which is why, in part, ‘The Speckled Band’ is so effective.