Syntax In Lamb To The Slaughter

358 Words1 Page

In “Lamb to the Slaughter”, Roald Dahl uses diction, details, and syntax to emphasize the matter-of-fact tone that is consistent throughout the entire story. Diction is a key element of tone that conveys this matter-of-fact tone. For example, Mary Maloney says to herself after killing her husband, “All right… So I’ve killed him” (Dahl 320). This sentence is lacking emotion. It states a pure fact, without going into further detail and captures a turning point in Mary Maloney’s way of thinking. By telling herself “all right,” Mary distances herself from the murder. She is detached from her own story and does not reveal any qualms about murdering her own husband. Similarly, Dahl uses the next sentence to describe Mary’s thoughts by explaining,

Show More
Related

  • Slaughterhouse Five Ap Language Essay

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    The tone of the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a mixture of candid and matter of fact, with an underlying tone of indifference and detachment. This tone is displayed throughout the chapter with Vonnegut’s use of informal language and phrases, such as the first sentence “All this happened, more or less.” He conveys this tone not only through phrases such as “and so on” or “so it goes”, but with stylistic elements with his use of punctuation, spaces, repetition, and ellipses. He uses this tone in the first chapter to set the audience up for how the rest of the novel will be written, and to display to the audience his style of writing and how it may not always be reliable.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Lamb To The Slaughter

    100 Words  | 1 Pages

    Often people are not what they seem. According to Roald Dahl, in “Lamb to the Slaughter,” “But there needn’t really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn’t be very good for my job.” When in public Patrick Maloney was the doting husband, but when the doors hid outside eyes Patrick revealed his true feelings. He wanted a divorce. He wanted to ruin his wife and soon-to-be child, but without anyone knowing. Thought the passage, the tone is revealed as condescending. The way Mr. Maloney talks to his wife is as though she is a small and unknowing child.

    Read More

  • Comparison Of The Tiger And Lamb To The Slaughter

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl captivates readers as they follow the story of how a loving wife turns into a merciless killer. This passage is told from the point

    Read More

  • Comparison/Contrast Essay: “Lamb to the Slaughter” and Trifles

    535 Words  | 2 Pages

    In "Lamb to the Slaughter" Roald Dahl uses the leg of lamb as a symbol of domesticity. The meat, which the primary intention of it was to be cooked and eaten, had mainly to do with the kitchen and women. When Mary used the leg of lamb to kill her husband, she turned a domestic tool into a tool for harm and murder. In this way, Mary challenged the domestic role the patriarchy of the time had placed her into. The leg of lamb also represents Mary, and the way she follows her husband, the same way a lamb follows a shepherd. The leg of lamb also alludes to the bible; in the way the Jesus was the Lamb and a martyr for Christians, the same way that Mary’s husband was a martyr for the patriarchate.

    Read More

  • Comparing Lamb to the Slaughter and The Speckled Band

    2323 Words  | 5 Pages

    going to eat the lamb because at the start and all the way through the

    Read More

  • How Is Mary Maloney Insane

    775 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary is no more capable of murder in her right mind than I am of swimming across the Atlantic Ocean. Roald Dahl’s short story, ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, is about the murder of police detective Patrick Maloney by his wife Mary. Driven to homicide after her husband’s unexpected announcement that he’s leaving her and their unborn child, Mary quickly regains her senses after fatally killing him with the leg of lamb. However, she would have never killed her husband if she was in the right state of mind. Mary is shown to be temporarily insane when committing the murder of her husband because of the fact that she was pregnant, she was in a state of in denial and desperation, and most importantly that she had exhibited visible signs that are attributes of a person with mental instabilities.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Tell Tale Heart And The Possibility Of Evil

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!’”. From the guilt pounding inside of the murder, they could not hold it in anymore when police arrived and that presents how actions never leave the heart or mind. Similar to The Possibility of Evil only Miss Strangeworth did get her action back at her, only she didn’t admit. “She began to cry silently for the wickedness of the world..” Using the descriptive language trait, the author describes how everyone eventually gets a taste of their own medicine. Overall, both stories signify how descriptive language and revealing actions will come together to form a confession.

    Read More

  • Isolation In Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

    937 Words  | 2 Pages

    The way the diction is used helps the reader understand, comprehend, and imagine their own type of situation as if the reader is in their shoes. For instance, in “The Man I Killed” O’Brien describes how O’Brien, the character, killed a man with a grenade in My Khe. He describes how “[h]is jaw was in his throat, his upper lips and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s…” (O’Brien, 124). In this chapter, O’Brien is so fixated in the guilt he has upon the guy he killed. O’Brien goes on talking about how the boy’s life was cut short. His guilt has him so obsessed with the life of his victim that how he is portrayed in the story, as the protagonist and narrator, fades to the back. Because O’Brien doesn’t use first person point of view to explain his guilt, he negotiates his feelings by operating in fantasy, imagining the victim’s childhood, teen years, adult life, and what could’ve

    Read More

  • Lamb to the Slaughter

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lamb to the Slaughter, by Roald Dahl, instantly grabs a reader’s attention with its grotesque title, ensuing someone’s downfall or failure. The saying “lamb to the slaughter,” usually refers to an innocent person who is ignorantly led to his or her failure. This particular short story describes a betrayal in which how a woman brutally kills her husband after he tells her that he wants a divorce. She then persuades the policemen who rush to the scene to consume the evidence. This action and Patrick’s actions show the theme of betrayal throughout the story which Roald Dahl portrays through the use of point of view, symbolism and black humor.

    Read More

  • Comparing Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter and The Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    4186 Words  | 9 Pages

    In ’Lamb to the Slaughter’ the main point to the story is to find out

    Read More

  • The Wreck of Time, How to Tell a True War Story, and Into the Wild

    1669 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ing their articulation, they try to make the readers reflect their emotions. Dillard mainly uses her tone to portray her ideas. Krakauer uses contradictory views of other people and his own thoughts to evaluate the journey of McCandless. O’Brien illustrates war stories and emotions created due to war stories on different plots. All these authors use diction in certain parts of their text to make their argument peculiar. They use contradictory views to make the reader choose the view that is correct for him/her, instead of forcing a conclusion on them.

    Read More

  • Repetition In Lamb Of Slaughter

    306 Words  | 1 Pages

    The repetition Roald Dahl uses helps the scare factor in “The Landlady” and “Lamb of Slaughter”. In “Lamb of Slaughter”, Roald Dahl repeats the words “Sit down” and “eat something” in the story. For example, in the text it says, “Anyways, she went on. I’ll get you some bread and cheese.” and “ Sit down, he said. Just for a minute, sit down.”. These words being repeated makes you wonder why he doesn’t want to eat, especially after a long hard day at work. Also, it makes you wonder what he wants to tell her, but it never tells you so it kinda makes you think of what he tells her. In “The Landlady”, Roald Dahl repeats the words “Bed and Breakfast” and how nice it looked. For example, in the text it says, “BED AND BREAKFAST, it said, BED AND

    Read More

  • Character Paragraph of Mary Maloney in Lam to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl

    640 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney is shown to have a very sinister and manipulative character. In the beginning of the story, Mary Maloney was a normal, loving and caring pregnant housewife that loved and cared for her husband, Patrick Maloney, very much. Earlier at the start of the story we see Mary was waiting for her husband to come home from work. She had set up the house with two table lights lit and plates on the dining table so they can have a very romantic dinner when Patrick comes home. When Patrick came home, Mary was very excited to see him. She would try to offer him some drinks and insisted she would get things in the house he needed so he didn’t have to get up himself. The countless times that Patrick said no to her offers and helpful doings, she still tried to serve and tried to make him feel comfortable and relax after work.

    Read More

  • The Use of Language in Chapter 47 of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist

    1338 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion the use of language is used cleverly to establish the dark miserable setting and explores each character’s features amazingly well ‘with face so distorted and pale’. The writer’s use of language manipulates the reader’s sympathies; personally in my view Nancy’s horrific murder provokes the most empathy and pity because she is the one staring into the face of her murderer.

    Read More

  • The Lamb By William Blake Analysis

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Lamb” by William Blake, pg 120 In William Blake 's Songs of Innocence and Experience, the fierce tiger and the gentle lamb define childhood by setting a contrast between the two very different states of the human soul. “The Lamb” is written in a way that would be suitable for a very young audience. “The Lamb” is one of the simplest poems that William Blake wrote. The symbolic meaning of innocence can easily be found throughout the poem.

    Read More

More about Syntax In Lamb To The Slaughter

Open Document