The Vigil

William Wymark JacobsProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 18K words
Chapters: 2

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Vigil by W. W. JacobsAuthor: Jacobs, W. W. (William Wymark), 1863-1943,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Apr 1, 2004

Editor's review

Jacobs is best known for his seafaring and streetwise comic tales, and "The Vigil" continues in his signature vein of everyday suspense and irony: an apparently routine night watch gradually reveals unease and absurdity through dialogue and detail, with an ending that is both surprising and entirely plausible. Though brief, the story brings the tension, wishful thinking and self-reassurance of ordinary people vividly to life; the language is colloquial and the dialogue dense, making it well suited to appreciating the pacing and foreshadowing of the English short story. Compared with his better-known "The Monkey's Paw", it has less supernatural horror and more everyday black humour, making it a good introduction to Jacobs's short fiction and a useful text for analysing narrative technique. Watch for how the narrator's casual tone creates tension, and for the hints planted before the final twist.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Adult readers who enjoy short-story twists and black humour
English learners who want short fiction with plenty of colloquial dialogue
Readers studying narrative technique in the British short story
Fans of Jacobs who want to read beyond his best-known works

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer long novels and complex world-building
Readers looking for heartwarming or inspirational stories
Beginners with weak English who are unused to colloquial dialogue

Reading tips

Read once for plot, then go back and look for the clues planted before the final twist.
Note the interjections and pauses in the dialogue, and see how speech reveals the characters' inner states.
After reading, compare it with Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw" to see how the two handle suspense differently.
English learners can pick a passage of dialogue and read it aloud in character to practise intonation and stress.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Does this story contain supernatural elements?

Unlike Jacobs's most famous story, "The Monkey's Paw", "The Vigil" builds its suspense mainly from ordinary situations and psychology. The supernatural element is very slight; it is more black humour and irony, and so suits readers who dislike horror.

Can I read this without having read other works by Jacobs?

Yes. It is a stand-alone short story and does not depend on prior reading. If it interests you, try "The Monkey's Paw" and his seafaring stories to get a fuller sense of how he moves between humour and suspense.

What level of English is needed?

The language is mostly colloquial dialogue with fairly short sentences, but it contains a good deal of British slang and period colloquialisms. An intermediate level of reading ability is enough to get through it; unfamiliar colloquial expressions can usually be guessed from context.

Comments

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About the author

William Wymark Jacobs Author · British · 1863–1943

William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) was a British short-story writer, born in London in 1863 and died there in 1943. In his early years he lived around the Thames docks and was familiar with the lives of sailors and dockworkers, which led him to write a great many humorous sea stories, often in a light and witty tone. His best-known work, The Monkey's Paw, is a classic horror short story included in The Lady of the Barge (1902); noted for its tight suspense and sudden twists, it is still widely anthologized in horror collections. The library holds 109 of his works, including The Lady of the Barge and Others, Ship's Company, A Tiger's Skin, Captains All, and Night Watches; his common category is inspirational growth. Public information is limited and details of his life are largely unavailable, yet his fiction is distinctive in subject, blending humor with horror, and has had a lasting influence on later short-story writing.