Dahl and Hitchcock are two authors/directors of the story “Lamb to the slaughter.” where Mary kills her husband with a leg of lamb out of rage and sadness. Dahl wrote the book while Hitchcock turned it into a short film. Both stories have a character named Mary, who is one of the main characters. Mary was smart enough to think up a fake story about her husband’s death, and call the police. Mary was shown as a clever and fast thinker, but also a bit overreactive. While both Roald Dahl and Alfred Hitchcock used actions to develop Mary, Dahl relied on thoughts while Hitchcock relied on speech. Both Dahl and Hitchcock relied heavily on actions. For instance, In Hitchcock's’ story, Mary has messed up the house to hide her doing. In addition, Mary …show more content…
showed signs of her intelligent in this action. She has fooled the police fairly well. Now, Dahl’s story showed Mary rehearsing in the mirror what she would say to the grocer in the mirror. Finally, this shows that Mary is sneaky and imaginative to make up her entire story. Therefore, Dahl and Hitchcock can show character traits through movie and book in a multitude of ways. Dahl relies on thoughts to characterize Mary.
Here, Mary thinks about what she should say to the grocer. This shows, Mary is clever to think of her speech. Now, Dahl then showed that Mary thought about ways to dispose of the weapon/leg of lamb. In the end, Dahl used thoughts to prove Mary, and since it was a book, he had limited options on how to describe Mary. Hitchcock relied on speech to make Mary a character. As shown in Hitchcock’s story, Mary is given off to be very upset when Patrick goes to leave, even saying “No, you can’t you can’t, I won’t let you.” Showing all of her emotions clearly though her voice. The after Mary killed Patrick, Mary convinces the police to believe her lies. In the end, Hitchcock gives Mary most characterization through speech because of his advantages for making a film. Overall, Hitchcock and Dahl characterize Mary with actions. With this, actions was the most common trait used to describe Mary. But, Dahl does use actions more because of the fact he will need to be able to give the reader a picture in their head with words. Hitchcock uses speech because of his filming advantages. Dahl and Hitchcock both characterize Mary fairly well, but Dahl did a better job because he was able to put more tiny details in his
story.
Hitchcock has a way of throwing clues in the face of the spectator, yet still allows some room for the spectator to find their own less obvious details. In the same museum scene, Hitchcock shows the viewer exactly what he wants them to see. In a sense, Hitchcock can be very manipulative with the camera. The audience sees the picture containing the women with a curl in her hair holding flowers, and then the direct connection is made by the camera, by showing the curl in Madeline’s hair, and the flowers sitting next to her. The spectator is led to believe that they have solved the mystery and she is truly possessed by the women in the picture. However, Hitchcock does this on purpose to lead the audience away from the truth that she is only acting. It is for these reasons that Hitchcock’s work at an auteur adds a level of depth and intrigue.
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,
Lamb to the Slaughter is a short story written by Roald Dahl (1953) which the reader can analyze using a feminist lens and Freud’s Psychoanalytical criticism. Mary, the protagonist, is a pregnant housewife who learns from her husband that he is going to leave her. The author describes Mary’s reaction to this terrible news by depicting her as going into a state of fugue in which Mary murders her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, and later destroys the evidence by feeding the cooked lamb to the police officers who come to investigate the murder. This characterization is typical of the attitude of the society of the time of a women, pregnant, presented with a situation she cannot control. Mary’s first instinct is to reject her husband’s news
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.
One major attribute in Hitchcock films is how creatively Hitchcock tricks the audience about the fate of the characters and the sequence of events. Many people argue that it is a tactic by Hitchcock to surprise his audience in order to increase the suspense of the movie. For example, in Shadow of a Doubt, the audience assumes that young Charlie is an innocent young girl who loves her uncle dearly. However as the movie progresses, Young Charlie is not as innocent as the audience suspects. Young Charlie, once a guiltless child, ends up killing her evil uncle. In Vertigo, the same Hitchcock trickery takes place. In the beginning, the audience has the impression that the Blond women is possessed by another woman who is trying to kill her. The audience also has the notion that the detective is a happy man who will solve the murder case correctly. Just before the movie ends, the audience realizes that the detective was specifically hired by a man to kill his wife. The detective, in the end, seems to be the hopeless, sad victim.
In Hitchcock’s narrative structure, he focuses on relationships. The relationship between society and their thoughts of morality, guilt and innocence. In the film, we never witness a murder, only the outcome of them. What we do see are the reactions to the killings. Every single week, the newspapers write
Alfred Hitchcock's idea of horror involves human suspense and teh realistic aspect of scary situations. Hitchcocks masterful directing leads the audience to be the frist to understand what is going on. The characters are left in the dark until the suspense reaches its climax. As the impending danger builds, the viewer is allowed to wtiness the situation before the character. This raises the level of suspense making it more realistic. Hitchcock takes normal situations and adds a terffiying twist. The twist is always something that has never happened, but is definetely possible. Hitchcocks The Birds is an excellent example of this. He takes normal situation with normal birds and turns them into killers. As the birds gather behind one unsuspecting victim, only the audience is allowed to see the impending danger. The woman is calm and collected as she waits on the bench. Hitchcock adds a little scare music and the woman suddenly realizes she is being watched. She whips around in horror and the birds are there ready to attack. This scfene is not a common occurance, but to an overactive imagination it could become a very real possibility.
Alfred Hitchcock masters the art of storytelling, framing every shot carefully to help further the plot and develop characters. The techniques of visual storytelling that Hitchcock implements in his films are not just meant to entertain; they all serve specific purposes in building his fictional universes. Hitchcock establishes the personalities of his characters by showing exactly what the characters see and hear as well as their reactions to their surroundings. Along with point-of-view shots, Hitchcock employs montage editing, creating suspense and further allowing characters to be seen as multi-faceted beings.
Would you kill the husband you love, to save your unborn child? Would you deceive yourself and those around you; to save your unborn child? In Roald Dahl’s short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter”, the protagonist, Mary Maloney is a very dynamic character. She has a dual nature since she is very cunning yet very caring, making her the perfect murderer along with the perfect mother. Firstly, she is very deceitful and has the ability to easily cover up her lies. Not only that, Mary is a very clever character who always makes the most intelligent choices. Lastly, the woman is very dutiful, caring and is very aware of her responsibilities as both a wife and a mother. Therefore all of these characteristics make Mary Maloney a very dynamic character
The characters in Hitchcock's films play a very important role in creating the tensions and twists, causing that heart stopping moment where you just want to yell at the TV.
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.
While Alfred Hitchcock is most well known for causing his audiences to feel fear, there is more to his movies then that. The themes of inadequateness of the police, control of all details in his films, and long stretches of no dialogue are prevalent in several of his films. He does not just happen to do these things by chance, but they are all related to things that happened to him during his childhood and his early career. No one can escape their past and not let it influence at least part of their life, and Alfred Hitchcock was no exception.
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.
Mary is described as short and ordinary, and Erdrich writes, “Her name was square and practical as the rest of her”. The uninteresting description of her makes her seem like a part of the town, which is written as grey, old, and uneventful. While Karl stops to look at the graceful bright beauty of the tree, the text says “Mary trudged solidly forward, hardly glancing at it,” showing her obvious disinterest in the contrast of the tree from the dull, grey town. When the dog attacked Karl, Mary ran towards her aunt’s house instead of back to the train. She stayed in the town and fit in
This was his most experimental movie, he describes this film to be an assembly of pieces to create fright and considered it the strongest demonstration of ’the pure cinema’ Hitchcock invoked it, pure cinema meant using the camera to tell the story. For example, instead of a character saying what a character intends to do pure cinema will cut between their incomplete task and the person to imply what is going on in their mind. Pure cinema was used to create an overly dramatic environment in place of dialogue. The director does not leave the viewer to watch the movie from a distance as someone who did no belong there instead. The movie’s psychological situation is built combining details and these details reveal the psychological meaning.