SOURCE: "A Clockwork Evil: Guilt and Coincidence in 'The Monkey,' " in The Dark Descent: Essays Defining Stephen King's Horrorscope, edited by Tony Magistrale, Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 129-36.

Doty is an American educator and critic. In the following essay, he explores themes and narrative technique in "The Monkey. "

In "The Monkey," Stephen King has used an extremely unlikely object to arouse terror in his readers, a toy that is "nothing but cogs and clockwork" [Skeleton Crew]. This [essay] will explore the means by which King makes the monkey's association with the deaths in the story convincing and answer William F. Nolan's charge that, while powerfully written, "The Monkey" "lacks interior logic" [Kingdom of Fear; The World of Stephen King, 1987].

Douglas Winter, who calls "The Monkey" "one of King's best short stories," sees the monkey as representing a random, or fated, evil, "without apparent logic or motivation." Tony Magistrale...