Lamb To The Slaughter Mary Maloney

The Perfect Murderer The best murderers are often the most unexpected ones. In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney, a loving pregnant wife, kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb when he tells her that he wants to leave her. She goes grocery shopping afterwards and calls the police claiming that her husband was killed while she went grocery shopping. In the end, she gets away with killing her husband, Patrick Maloney. Mary Maloney is calm, intelligent and persuasive, making her a perfect murderer.

In Lamb to the Slaughter, Mary’s husband, Patrick Maloney no longer wanted to be with her. His exact

In Roal Dahl’s short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter”, Mary Maloney is a cold-blooded killer. To begin, Mary immediately forms a plan to avoid punishment after killing her husband. After murdering her husband, it is said that “It was extraordinary now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew what the punishment would be” (Dahl, 3).

In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney is a deceptive criminal. At this point in the story, Mary travels to the grocery store to create an alibi for herself. After she talks with Sam the grocer, she returns home and calls the police. Sobbing, she uses her alibi and pretends she does not know how the murder occurred. Dahl writes, “Is he dead? She cried. “I’m afraid he is. What happened? Briefly, she told her story about going to the grocer and coming back to find him on the floor. While she was talking, crying and talking...” (Dahl 9). The act of Mary killing her husband is a crime, which makes Mary a criminal. She simply killed her husband without a second thought, not remembering that she had been with him for years

In the Lamb to the Slaughter, Mary Malone effectively murders her husband with, ironically, the lamb she was originally making for supper. Although Mary Malone did murder her husband in the heat of the moment, she can’t be completely cast out and be at fault for her actions. Mary was deeply infatuated with her husband, and clearly didn’t plan on murdering her husband anytime soon. Along with that, Mr. Maloney didn’t seem to have any sentimental value towards Mary, and didn’t give her the attention and love that she was so desperately begging for. To start, Mary was the stereotypical 1950’s housewife that was madly infatuated with her husband and would’ve done anything for him.

In the short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” by Roald Dahl portrays an abhorrent murder. During the 1950’s in the Maloney household, Patrick Maloney elects to remove Mary Maloney, his wife from his life. Mr. Maloney has found the love of his life and it no more Mrs. Maloney. Added to the conflict, Mary Maloney was impregnated by Patrick Maloney six months ago. Mary was overjoyed with her amazing life, but the moment she was betrayed, everything changed for her.

In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, the main character Mary Maloney is insane. She kills her husband without hesitation because he wanted to end their marriage. He was in love with sh woman. She overreacted due to her anger and hits him with a large piece of meat. Some may believe she is a liar, but technically she never directly lied to anyone.

Have you ever met individuals and think they are so honest however then they accomplish something so ironic and make you suspect something? In "Lamb to the Slaughter," Mary Maloney is extremely charming and blameless in the first place however later turns into the complete opposite. In the short story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney, a housewife in her sixth month of pregnancy, is waiting for her husband to return home. After she hears some disillusioning news from her significant other, she lets out her indignation and slaughters her better half with a sheep's leg. After that, she devises an arrangement to cover her tracks up by controlling the policemen into eating the sheep out of thoughtfulness.

Mary Maloney is a sympathetic character because she covered up Patrick’s death to protect her baby. All of the tricking and deceiving she did was to save her unborn child from what could have happened as a result of her actions. She did not know what the laws were for murdered with unborn babies and she did not want to find out. Dahl states, “ What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill both-mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? Mary Maloney didn’t know. And she certainly wasn’t prepared to take a chance” (3). Mary’s number one concern was for her baby. She did not want

Also, she does not pause before killing her husband, which shows that she does not value Patrick’s life at all. Furthermore, Mary comes up with a deceitful story to shift blame away from herself. As the police officers reached Mary’s house, the narrator says that, “In a few words, she told

Mary might just have gone a little too far in “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. Mr. Maloney’s loving wife, Mary, is

Dahl’s protagonist in “Lamb to Slaughter”, Mary Maloney, displays her deceitful nature when her husband comes home from a long day of work. Mary kills Patrick with a frozen leg of lamb after he informs her that he wants a divorce. Immediately thereafter, she goes to the store to purchase vegetables. This is the beginning of her deceit. Mary clearly does not need vegetables. Her trek to the store is her way of creating an an alibi. This adds another layer to her deception. Here, she engages in a conversation with a seemingly familiar clerk, Sam. She informs him that Patrick “decided he’s tired and doesn’t want to eat out tonight” (Dahl 3). This gives Sam the impression that her husband is still alive when in all actuality, he is dead. She has added yet another layer to her level of deception. Mary’s deception has no limits. She eventually deceives herself into thinking she did not murder her husband. She convinces herself that she is “not expecting to find

In Roald Dahl’s, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” Dahl resembles the theme of the story to show the couples’ deception. Dahl shows it by having the husbands desire to leave in an unsystematic way. It shows dishonor and betrayal to the wife since she was 6 months pregnant and the only thing keeping her happy was having a husband “to take care of.” Mary was the housewife, and Patrick was the husband. Mary was always prepared with meals and comfort once Patrick got home from work. They both had to do very little just to keep a smile on both of their faces, at least a fake smile. Patrick displayed ignorance once he came home one evening, then mentioning how he wants to leave her. As you could imagine the amount of shock Mary had in her, lead her to the decision she made by the end of the story.

Dahl’s use of dramatic irony during the story helps displays the actions of Mary Maloney and other characters. Mary Maloney swings the leg of the lamb to the back of the head of her husband. Dahl says, “ she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head” (Dahl 320). As a result, this quote is effective because the lamb was used as a weapon, instead of food; which shows that Mary could use anything to harm someone without her trying or when it was her attempt to hurt that someone. The story writes, “Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack”. In the same way as the first quote, this sets back to Mary because she sabotages the police to eat the lamb. With the police eating the lamb she is getting rid of the evidence so she does not get caught. From the use of dramatic irony in the story, Dahl's builds Mary as a character; he also uses different irony to create her.

Mary is very manipulative in that she is able to create the character of the poor, pregnant wife, whose husband has just been murdered. She is able to convince the police to take pity on her, to mix her a drink and then to even eat the evidence, the leg of lamb that she has left in the oven. "Why don’t you eat up that lamb that is in the oven" (Dahl, p. 17). Mary realizes that if the police find the evidence she will go to jail. Her quick thinking and manipulative character results in the police officers eathign the evidence and therefore she cannot be charged of this crime. These actions show the complex character that Mary Maloney truly is.