Blog Post 12 (Lesson Learned)

           Well I'm going  start off with "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs because I was so excited to read this story since the beginning of the semester when I saw that we were going to read it. I absolutely love this story, it brings back feelings of nostalgia since I read it in elementary school for a Halloween segment we had in class. Also, as I was re-reading, I noticed it used the word tumblers, and I love the using the app Tumblr (it's how I waste my life away)-- so why not love the short story solely on for that reason? While yes it's great to like it for those reasons, I like the story because it has so many lessons learned and themes that play into it. Such be careful what you wish; money cannot buy happiness, and there is no love like a mother's love for her child. A quick synopsis of the story is: A man find a magical paw called the money's paw that allows for three wishes. His first wish was to be rich (in essence), and he gets his wish through his son dying at working by getting caught in machinery. After ten days, the man's grieving wife convinces him to use the second wife to bring the son to life. As the son was knocking and tapping at the door and the mother was trying to open the hatchet of the door, in fear of what his resurrected son (Herbert) might look like, the man wished his son dead. One thing I wish that would be explained in this story is what happens to the monkey paw after this event? Does it just disappear, or is it just rendered useless and will make a nice key chain? It is mentioned that the monkey's paw only works for three people to make three wishes and the main character Mr. White was the third man.  Another thing that puzzled me was why was there a recurrence of the number three? Only 3 men could use the paw, only three wishes could be made, only three people lived in the house. I did some research and found that three has a representation of completion. It's ironic because at the end of the story, the White family was left more incomplete than ever and filled with more solemn than ever, with only money to fill the void,
          The story "Premature Burial" by Edgar Allan Poe was an interesting read. But what really stood out me was not the lesson learned, but in the beginning of the story (where there a multiple stories of people bring mistaken for dead and buried). There was a part of the story where Poe was describing the symptoms of death and how people would mysteriously rise back to life. Well, in modern science there is thing called The Lazarus Effect (the name deriving from the Biblical story where Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead). What it means is that a patient exerts all the symptoms of death and would be pronounced dead; however, they would rise mysteriously from slumber. And I immediately thought of the movie "The Lazarus Effect" that just came out a few months ago, It basically just contorts this and plays on our fear falling into the uncanny valley.  Anyhow, the story only made me think of that horror movie (and we all know how I don't mix well with horror things) so all I could say is, "Thank you, Poe."

update:

Watching "The Monkey's Paw" short film was very interesting. When it first started I thought it was going to be scary (I literally was holding onto a teddy bear); however, it wasn't that bad and was pretty over dramatic. The zombie section we talked about as well was pretty cool; however, I wished we could have talked about the popular tv series "The Walking Dead" and "The Strain" more. But it was still cool.