27 pages • 54 minutes read
Stephen KingThe Monkey
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Monkey Toy
Content Warning: This section contains references to child abuse and graphic descriptions of bodily injury.
The monkey toy serves as a multifaceted symbol of The Nature of Evil. First and foremost, it represents the darkness that exists within humanity. Throughout the story, the monkey is portrayed as malevolent and sinister, with an unsettling presence that affects Hal Shelburn viscerally whenever he sees it. Nevertheless, Hal is drawn to it in a way he can’t articulate; at one point, his wife even discovers him cuddling the toy while sleeping. This suggests the duality of human nature and the potential for darkness to reside within even the most seemingly harmless objects or individuals. Just as the monkey’s grin masks its sinister nature, Hal does not consider himself a violent or immoral person. Nevertheless, under the strain of the monkey’s presence, he behaves abusively toward his wife and children.
The implication that Hal’s flaws stem partly from a traumatic childhood creates another parallel to the monkey, which Hal speculates experienced “something bad” that warped its nature. This underscores the toy’s function as a symbol of the destructive power of secrets and guilt. As the story progresses, it emerges that the monkey is linked to many tragic events from the past, the most notable being the death of Hal’s mother, which Hal inadvertently caused by winding the toy’s key. The monkey embodies the guilt and remorse that Hal carries but rarely acknowledges, highlighting the destructive nature of suppressed emotions.
Finally, the monkey toy symbolizes the seeming intractability of evil. No matter how hard the characters try to resist or escape its influence, the monkey’s malevolence persists; it finds its way back to Hal multiple times throughout his childhood and adulthood, and the newspaper excerpt that closes the story implies that it still has the power to kill. This suggests that evil cannot be fully eradicated.
The Natural World
The motif of natural imagery plays a significant role in creating an atmospheric backdrop of tension and impending doom. The wind appears several times, gusting through the house or whistling in the attic, and embodies the unseen malevolence associated with the monkey toy. It is present at several turning points, from the “cold gust of wind [...] [blowing] a long note through the old, rusty gutter” as Dennis and Petey discover the monkey, to Hal’s battle with the wind as he disposes of the monkey in the lake (159). As an elemental force that cannot be controlled, the wind also underscores the characters’ lack of agency in the face of the powerful forces the monkey represents.
Water appears frequently in the story as well, from the “wet, rock-lined throat” of the well to the lake’s “frenzy of waves [...] gone a deadly shade of blue sewn with white seams” (198). Hal’s father was a merchant mariner, and Hal’s repressed grief and anger over his father’s disappearance goes some way toward explaining the ominous imagery that often surrounds the story’s depictions of water. This also imbues Hal’s decision to throw the monkey into a lake with greater symbolism; in doing so, Hal confronts a childhood trauma that seems to be at the heart of many of his struggles.
Head Trauma
Several of the monkey’s victims die due to head trauma of one form or another; Bill’s friend is struck head-on by a car, Hal and Bill’s mother dies of a brain embolism, Johnny breaks his neck, and Uncle Will’s dog has a brain hemorrhage. Hal also speculates that the monkey might have caused his aunt’s stroke. The nature of these accidents and illnesses is a motif that develops the story’s exploration of evil. Like the monkey, which bangs its cymbals unthinkingly, evil operates on a largely unconscious level. More than once, Hal lashes out at his wife and children without intending to, “the words escap[ing] before he [can] stop them” (175). The recurring images of heads severed from spinal cords or “shattered” by cars mirror Hal’s alienation from his own unconscious and the dark impulses that exist there.
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