Lamb To The Slaughter Irony

What are the odds that the murderer is married to the victim that was killed? In Roald Dahl’s short story “Lamb to the Slaughter”, it talks about the revenge between a husband and wife. In the opening scene, the main protagonist is introduced to us, who goes by the name Mary. Mary is a stay-at-home wife who takes care of her husband Patrick. One day as Mary’s husband came home he told her some distressing news. When hearing this news, Mary is so upset upon hearing the news that she picks up a frozen lamb from the kitchen and kills him. During the time of the investigation of Patrick, Mary decides to cook up the lamb for dinner. After some consideration, they take up Mary on her offer. As they were going through the investigation, Mary was in the other room laughing as the
Backing up the turning point of events, in this situation in the story Mary creates Situational Irony in the story when she cooks the lamb that was used as a murder weapon and serves it to the detectives. Situational irony is when the main character of the story does something the audience expects it to do. Dahl includes this literary element when he incorporates a detail such as “Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s in the oven?”. It’ll be cooked just right now”(Dahl 2). This important feature displays that Mary is clever in finding a way to “get rid” of the weapon that she used to murder Patrick with. This is where situational irony is used with the fact that nobody could have known that the murder weapon was really the meal being served on a silver platter and therefore being eaten. Dahl creates the betrayal in the story when details are included such as “Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises”. Probably right under our very nose. What do you think Jack is doing? And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle”(Dahl 3). This characteristic is