How Does Mary Maloney Use Evil In Lamb To The Slaughter

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When people get hurt or mad, sometimes they lash out right? It is only human nature, however, it is when the pain consumes them that they can find a certain evil in it. In Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" and Edgar Allan Poe's "A Tell Tale Heart" the idea of potential evil within human nature is very clearly present. First off, Mary Maloney is heartbroken after being told that her husband wants to leave her. This brings out the worst in her. Secondly, the Unknown Narrator drives himself mad by obsessing over a glass eye. It is through emotion and thoughts that allow people to see past a pretty little face and a stranger, like in "Lamb to the slaughter". 
Mary Maloney is your everyday average housewife, but like all people, we have emotions …show more content…

To begin with, after hearing from her husband that he wanted to leave her, Mary tried to pretend like nothing happened because she did not want a broken heart. Dahl writes, "Her first instinct [is] not to believe any of it. To reject it all. It [occurs] to her that perhaps he [didn't] even speak" (116). Mary did not want to get hurt so she tries to convince herself that it was not real. No one wants to get hurt but, it almost seems selfish that she would not let him go. Gradually, her husband begins to insist on leaving, so with all her feelings bottled up inside, like a volcano, Mary erupts. She lashes out just as anyone would, but her emotions, as strong as they were, led her to the point of actually killing her husband.  It describes her actions when Dahl says, "Mary Maloney simply [walks] up behind him and without a pause she [swings] a big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head" (116). Mary did not think, she did not stop from swinging that lamb. She had no control over …show more content…

Firstly, the Unknown Narrator was a mad man. There was something wrong in his mind. He did not admit to the fact that he was insane and denial can truly be an evil thing. Poe states, "TRUE! Nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will you say that I'm mad" (1). Think of a mental institution, sometimes there will be people screaming for their freedom, belting at the top of their lungs that they are fine, that they are not insane, but it is a disease, inside and out. Next, there is the fact that the Narrator is blinded by his hatred of the man's eye so much that he wants to kill the man, even though the Narrator admits he loves the old man.  The Narrator states, "I loved the old man. He [has] never wronged me. He [has] never given me an insult. For his gold I [have] no desire. I think it [is] his eye" (Poe 1). He is so focused on his hate for the eye to the point where he wants to get rid of it, for good. This leads me to my final point where he kills the man. The voices in his head drove him to the point of no return. It was all over just as he says, "The old man [is] dead. I [remove] the bed and [examine] the corpse. Yes he [is] stone, stone dead. I [place] my hand upon the heart and [hold] it there many minutes. There [is] no pulsation. He [is] stone dead. His eye

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