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Lamb To The Slaughter Conflict

Decent Essays

To begin, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl takes place in the 1950’s in the Malohney household. The two main characters of the story are Mary Malohney and Patrick Malohney. Firstly, Patrick arrives at his home, greeted by his wife Mary. At this time, Patrick is acting quite peculiar and helps himself to multiple drinks. After refusing to eat supper, Patrick essentially creates the main conflict of the story. Patrick explains to his pregnant wife Mary that he wants to leave her alone, with her unborn child, to marry someone else. Shocked, Mary cried that Patrick cannot leave her and refused to let him leave. Subsequently, Patrick replied saying “try and stop me”. To his reply, Mary left the room to grab a bulky lamb leg from the freezer …show more content…

Mary put the lamb leg into the oven, however she left the heat setting on low. Mary was exceptionally intelligent and careful to do so, so no one would suspect her of committing any crime before her following actions. Afterwards, Mary left her home to purchase various vegetables at a local market. Upon returning home, Mary dropped her bags on the floor and scattered numerous papers and flipped over several pieces of furniture, as if a person came into her house and murdered Patrick. Later, Mary called the police in a rushed manner, crying about her dead husband. When the police came, Mary explained her case to Sergeant Noonan as if she had not known anything about her husband’s death prior to arriving back to her house from the store. At this point in the story, dramatic irony is present. The readers of the story know how Patrick died and who caused his causality, yet none of the detectives know of it. Additionally, situational irony was present because, for most of the time, the detectives did not suspect Mary to be the murderer of Patrick, yet she was the murderer. Nevertheless, the detectives could identify a few key components to the murder. One clue was that the weapon could not have been sharp, for Patrick’s skin had not been broken but his skull was shattered. In addition, the detective knew that the murder was unprofessional; the weapon was most likely an object from inside the house.

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