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The Speckled Band by Arthur Conan Doyle and Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl

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Discuss the social and historical context of each text reflected in The Speckled Ban by Arthur Conan Doyle and Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl. In this essay, I intend to compare and contrast the two short stories "The Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, and "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl, picking out techniques used which make it exactly, or exactly the opposite of a typical detective story/murder mystery. Both "The Speckled Band" and "Lamb to the Slaughter" have ingredients for a detective story, i.e. they both have a cold murderer who is just a little mad. On the other hand, they are presented to us very differently, making one story very formulaic, and making the other very untypical of the murder …show more content…

In "The Speckled Band, the setting of the main part of the story is very formulaic of the murder mystery genre. The story is set in an old house. Just the look of it could make you think twice about going inside; after all, 'it could collapse on you any moment', as Dr Watson described. The manor of Stoke Moran is the kind of place that you would expect to be the setting of a murder mystery, the Maloney residence is not. The setting for the story is a warm 1950's family home, belonging to Mr and Mrs Patrick Maloney. Dahl starts the story with a short description of the setting. 'The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight, hers and the one by the empty chair opposite.' This description is not the typical setting for this type of story, and definitely nothing like the description of Stoke Moran. This technique makes the reader feels secure and unaware of what is eventually going to happen. With the murderers, Conan-Doyle uses the formulaeic character of Dr Roylott, a very violent man. You can assume that he is the murderer in this story just by the description Dr Watson gives of him. He describes Dr Roylott as 'a huge man', who possessed 'A large face seared with a thousand wrinkles and marked with every evil

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