Blog Set #12

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.