The Monkey's Paw

Laburnam Villa, somewhere in England, around 1902. Mr. White is the elderly man who buys the monkey's paw and uses it to wish for two hundred pounds in order to pay off the loan on his house. At the beginning of the story, he's skeptical about the paw. Is it magical, or is it just an icky piece of junk? By the end of the story, though, he's totally convinced of its powers. Mrs. White is a strong woman, and the narrator even says she's smarter than her husband. We get the sense that she makes lots of decisions for the family and that her husband is happy with this reversal of traditional gender roles. Herbert White is Mr. and Mrs. white only son. The Whites don't trust Sergeant-Major Morris, He is described as middle-aged: older than Herbert but younger than his parents. The Whites apparently knew him before he left England to go spend 21 years with the army in India. Supposedly he wished on the monkeys paw and lived to tell about it..