Short Story Summary : Lamb To The Slaughter

Everybody takes risks in their lives. Some risks are worse than other risks. Someone driving a car down the highway at 120 mph is a major risk and someone walking down the street is a small risk. Risks are a common thing that everybody does, and it is inevitable to not do anything risky in that person's life. In literature, there are many risks, to make the story more interesting to read. In the three short stories “The Colomber”, “Contents of a Dead Man's Pocket”, and “Lamb to the Slaughter” the characters do a lot of risky things.

Roald Dahl isa world renowned children's author, with books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG. However, his short story Lamb to the Slaughter is less popular, but equally a literary masterpiece. The short story is about a housewife Mary’s relationship with her husband, Patrick. He is rude and commanding to her as she attempts to prepare their supper, so she impulsively kills him with the lamb leg she was readying for their meal. Dahl uses emotions, irony, and characterization as narrative elements to create tension between characters in his short story Lamb to the Slaughter.

In Roald Dahl’s short story “Lamb to the Slaughter” , Mary Maloney murders her husband, a detective, after he declares that he is leaving her. Mary then has to cover her tracks or else she and her unborn child will be killed. Throughout the story, Mary’s character changes from loving wife to cold killer and back again based on her situation.

Mrs. Maloney gets away with the murder in the end. This caused by a revolting ending in which he police detectives eat the leg of lamb that was used to kill Patrick. The writer creates an unbelievable ending by making the story, up to the murder, set in a very normal family house. It is not somewhere you would associate with a morbid killing. The writer builds up an impression that the marriage may not be as good as it could be, and both were under strain not to release the tension onto each other.

You wouldn’t expect the lamb to kill the man. “ Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl is a about a women named Mary Maloney that killed her husband. Mary’s husband tells her that he is leaving her. Not knowing what to do to try to keep her husband, she gets a leg of lamb and hits her husband in the back of the head and kills him. She quickly covers her tracks and fools the police, offering them the leg of the lamb for dinner to get rid of the evidence. Therefore Roald Dahl’s use of irony throughout the story, builds up a understanding of Mary Maloney.

Traumatic news can lead to traumatic actions. In Roald Dahl’s ”Lamb to the Slaughter,” main character Mary Maloney is told very shocking new that causes her to overreact and kill her husband Patrick Maloney. Their blissful life turned upside down in a matter of five minutes. Mary was a great wife to Patrick. She loved him very much and is even carrying his child. Mary always catered to Patrick and was very loyal to him. Mary Maloney is a sympathetic character because she was very loving, compliant, and only lied to protect her baby.

Roald Dahl, a British novelist, offered his readers a classical short story, “ Lamb to the Slaughter,” with the tale of betrayal, justice, injustice and passivity. Two main characters of the story are detective Mr. Patrick and Ms. Patrick who live in small town. Roald Dahl tries to reflect human nature of perversity, and cruelty through the “ Lamb to the Slaughter”. As the story progresses, theme of love, passion, betrayal and injustice grow stronger. Author smartly shows us how an idle wife becomes a smart criminal to take the revenge of her betrayal and successes to trick officers.

going to leave her but Dahl does not make it clear what the bad news

In the short story Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl the husband that comes home early one day with bad news. He told his pregnant wife something. It was really shocking to her, and in the story it said that she got really sad. He then says that he would give her money and see that she is looked after. When she heard the news she went downstairs to the basement and got a frozen lamb to cook him. When she came up, he heard her and could tell that she wanted to make him supper. So he told her that he was going out so she doesn’t have to make it, but he said it in quite a rude manner and she seemed bothered by this because right after he said that she hit him in the head with the frozen lamb and he died. After she seen what she has done,

(Dahl 4). Her persuasion, then convinces the detectives to eat the leg of lamb and therefore the murder weapon. This demonstrates Mary’s intelligence and deceitfulness as a killer through dramatic irony due to the detectives not knowing

The conflict in “Lamb to the Slaughter” is, that Mary. Maloney, a devoted housewife, six months pregnant, kills her husband with a leg of lamb after he tells her that he is planning on leaving her. In the very beginning, the atmosphere is very calm. Mary Maloney is peacefully sewing in her living room waiting for her husband, a police officer, to come home from work. After his arrival, they silently sit in the living room drinking whisky. Mrs. Maloney watches her husband very carefully but after he swallows his whisky very quickly and gets another stronger drink, the reader notices that something is unusual. Before she wants to fix something for supper, her husband stops her and tells her, even though it isn’t exactly conveyed to the reader, that he

This is a twisted, gripping tale of Mary Maloney, who murders her own husband by hitting him with a frozen leg of lamb and then hiding her crime and disposing of the evidence by feeding the lamb to the policemen who come to investigate the murder.

Everyone does something at some point in their life that can be considered insane. Sometimes it’s simple things like trying a new food or a new hobby However, other times it can bit more extreme such as stepping outside of the status quo or just simple committing a crime altogether. The story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl depicts the life of Mary Maloney and the event of her killing her husband. However, Mary Maloney is innocent due to reason of Insanity because she portrays symptoms of a person with schizophrenia, the forced conformity of gender roles, and her over attachment or jealousy for her husband.

him he was tired. She then asked him if he wanted supper but he said

In "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl, a detached tone is set throughout the short story. For example, Patrick Maloney tells Mary Maloney that he has something to say, "And he told her. It didn't take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat very still through it all" (319). The narrator omits the details that the husband shares in his news almost as if it is insignificant. What seems to matter more is the wife and what she does after she is told the news. It is one small event that causes the next chain of events in the story. In addition, after returning upstairs from the basement with the leg of lamb, Mrs. Maloney's next acts are described as "simply walked up behind him and without