Examples Of Irony In Lamb To The Slaughter

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Irony in “Lamb to the Slaughter” How would “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl be different if there were no examples of irony used throughout the story? In the story Mary Maloney waits all day for husband to come home from work, only to find out he wants a divorce from her. Not knowing how to react, she continues on with her plan to make them supper, only for her husband, Patrick Maloney, to tell her he does not want supper and he just wants to go out. Feeling angry and hurt, she walks up to him and kills him with a frozen leg of a lamb. Mary Maloney knows the consequences for murder, so she quickly devises a plan to hide the fact that she is the suspect, resulting in the murder investigators eating the murder weapon. Irony is a very important literary element in Lamb to the Slaughter. …show more content…

Maloney comes back upstairs and announces that she is going to make supper, it seems like everything goes downhill from there. An example of situational irony is used when the author tells readers, “At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high into the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head....All right, she told herself. So I’ve killed him” (Dahl 2). At the beginning of the story the author depicts Mrs. Maloney as a sweet, loving, and caring wife who is absolutely head over heels for her husband. Once her husband declares that he wishes for a divorce, it is like a whole new character is introduced to the story and she kills him without hesitation. After she kills him, she does not even show a hint of remorse or a hint of emotion in general. Not only is this out of character for someone like Mrs. Maloney, but this is also very shocking considering that she is someone who would supposedly go to the ends of the earth for her

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