The medical
condition in which Poe’s describe in the story is one where he refers to it as
catalepsy, which is in fact, a true medical condition but before even knowing
about its name it seems plausible. I had heard stories from my father about
people in his village in Colombia that this has happened to. There have been
many stories, mostly urban legends, where this kind of thing has happened. It
does seem believable from how he describes it in the story when he uses the
details that sound like somewhat medical. It doesn’t make it seem like it is
something unnatural to our reality, very much so it is something we can find to
be true. We could see it to be true that someone’s muscles could tense up and
they couldn’t be able to move. This is something that could be seen in even
sleep paralysis where you cannot move at all. This in itself is something scary
to think that could happen to us and we have no control over it.
In the
Monkey’s Paw we can see clearly many supernatural instances, the whole story in
itself seems to be a supernatural event. There were too many things that
happened for it to be a “coincidence”. Oddly enough when the son died they got
the EXACT amount of money they asked for. Even more odd was when the mother
pleaded to bring her son back to life and within a few minutes of there was a
loud knock on the door and by the time she went down to open the door her
husband had wished against it. So when she went to open the door there was no
one there, strange isn’t it? After all these things happen it wouldn’t make
sense for this to all be coincidence, it had to be supernatural of some sorts.
