Lamb To Slaughter Essay

Lamb to Slaughter” Essay

In the story “Lamb to Slaughter” written by Ronald Dahl, the author portrays multiple conflicts between various characters. The characters include the major character, Mary Maloney, and the minor character, Patrick Maloney. The setting of the short story is in the Maloney residence during 1958. Patrick Maloney is Mary’s husband, and the father of their unborn child. The story begins when Mary was anxiously waiting for Patrick to come home from a long day at work. When Patrick arrived home, she warmly welcomed him home. Aware of his unusualness, she asked how his day was while he went over to drink hard whiskey without taking his coat off. Realizing the awareness of the situation, she explained to him that they did

not have to go out for dinner that night. As she went to fetch him dinner from the garage, he stopped her. He informed her that he had fallen in love with another woman, and that he was leaving her for good with the unborn child.

Stunned, she had gone to fetch the lamb leg for dinner. She denied he had just told her that information. Those are some of the rising actions of the story, brining us to the main conflict. The main conflict of the story is how Mary did not want Pat to leave her, causing her to try and stop him from leaving her with her unborn child. Mary went to the freezer and retrieved a lamb leg. With the lamb leg, she went up to Patrick, and struck him on the head with the lamb leg. He instantly fell to the floor; dead. The climax of the story is how Mary had murdered Patrick. Implausibly, Mary had acknowledged she would have to stage a burglary. She started off by calling Molly, the woman who was hosting the dinner, and told her how Patrick was tired, so they could not make it. Afterwards, she put the lamb leg, the murder weapon, into the oven to cook it. The lamb leg was in the oven for four hours before she returned. She left to go to retrieve some vegetables from the store. She came back, wrecked the living room, and called the police informing them that there had been a burglary. As soon as they came, she answered their questions, and expressed how she was innocent. The detective asked if Pat seemed troubled,

but Mary constantly answered no. The detectives and doctor had come upon multiple true clues; for example, Patrick had been struck on the head with a hard, non-sharp object, such as a club. Additionally, they found the weapon was still on the premises and it weighed about eight to nine pounds. After hours of searching and investigating, Mary invited the police and detectives to eat the lamb leg. The leg was not burned, because it was a big leg and it was frozen, in need of extra hours to defrost it. Not knowing the lamb leg was the murder weapon; they had eaten the whole leg! That brings us to the verbal irony; a detective had said the phrase, “ Probably right under our very noses”. He had meant that the murder weapon was under their noses, which it was; the lamb leg. The dramatic irony of the story is when readers know something that the characters in the story do not. In this story, the dramatic irony was that Mary had killed Patrick. The situational irony of the story is that everyone believes that it was a burglary. The resolution of the story is that Patrick does not leave Mary, because he is dead. In the end of the short story, the detectives do not realize Mary is the murderer, and they got the weapon. Therefore Mary got away with murder. In the story, “Lamb of Slaughter”, there were multiple conflicts between various characters that had come to end by some actions by the main character, Mary Maloney.