Meet the Cast
Mr. White
Mr. White is the elderly man who buys the monkey's paw and uses it to wish for two hundred pounds (British money) in order to pay off the loan on his house. At the beginning of the story, he's skep...
Mrs. White
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 rev...
Herbert White
We don't know much about Herbert White. How old is he? Why is he still living with his parents? How did he deal with the death of his siblings (whom we know even less about than him)? What does he...
Sergeant-Major Morris
We don't know much about Sergeant-Major Morris, but we don't trust him. He is described as middle-aged: older than Herbert but younger than his parents. The Whites apparently knew him before he lef...
The Man from Maw and Meggins
This is perhaps the most mysterious character in the story. He wears fancy clothes and works for the company that employed Herbert White. He is probably a lawyer of some sort, settling the Maw and...
The Monkey
Poor monkey! Somebody cut off its paw to make a possibly magical bad luck charm. This critter is forgotten and is rarely if ever mentioned in discussions of the story. But Herbert White does see (o...