One of the most revealing features of The Hand is not the object itself, but how far away it always remains. The crime does not unfold in front of us. The danger never threatens the listeners. The horror is filtered through layers of narration, distance, and time. Maupassant, through the third-person narrator, does this deliberately. […]
One of the most common ways readers approach Guy de Maupassant’s The Hand is to ask a single question: Was the hand alive? Was it supernatural? Was it psychological? Was it a hallucination? A curse? A vendetta returned from the grave? Those questions are understandable. They are also beside the point. Maupassant, through his third-person […]
