Lamb To The Slaughter

The bait has been set. Roald Dahl has captured readers from the entire world with his short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Dahl traps the reader into sympathizing with a killer. “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a great story because the author adds his touch, the theme is distinct, it relates to popular culture during the time it was written, it makes the reader make difficult moral choices, and the story relates to itself in a unique manner.

In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” the author makes this a great story. He steps out of his point of view, and focuses on narrating inside of Mary Maloney’s house. Dahl also decides to not make the killing scene too gory or bloody and makes it straightforward. Dahl involved killings in his stories and made
The story is great in that there is no needless information and it is strictly the plot. The story is great because the climax involves a reversal, because when Mary first killed him, she then thought about the consequences. Another reason why the story is great is the mood of the story changed from suspenseful to a calm mood after the killing. A great scene where the story relates to itself and where a reversal occurs is when Jack Noonan and O’Malley come to the house. They say that if they find the weapon, then they can find the murderer. They also say while they are eating the lamb leg that “It’s probably right under our noses” (Dahl 140). This is a great example of irony because little do they know that the weapon is under their noses, and they are eating it at that moment. There are also many symbols that are in the story. The piece of meat is a great example of this, in how an innocent lamb was slaughtered violently, then used to kill someone. This is interpreted as opposite of what the Biblical meaning of the Lamb of God is, and Dahl makes it much worse and distorted. The story is also great in the way it uses black humor. The story uses black humor in the scene when Sam offers Mary a piece of cake for Patrick, her dead husband. Mary commits the “perfect crime” and acts as if it is just a normal night (Bernardo 2251). Another reason why the story is great is that Mary starts out as a “cheerful housewife” when her husband is happy, but then suddenly and spontaneously she turns into a brute who is “smashing her husband’s skull with the frozen joint of meat” when he is not happy (Lamb 128). Mary wants everything to be perfect and normal with her husband and her life. Her goal in life is to make her husband happy. When her husband is Passivity is a main theme, and is a problem for the couple. Mary lives “like clockwork” as she anticipates her husband coming home from work at the same time