Lamb To The Slaughter Mary Maloney Character Analysis

In the story Lamb to The Slaughter, Mary Maloney appears to be the loving and innocent wife. Apart from being a loving wife, Mary is a devious murderer nonetheless. In spite of being shaken by the recent incidents, she could still keep her mind clear and she thought of her following moves to conceal her tracks. She remained emotionless after murdering her husband and pretended it never happened. In the story Ronald Dahl justifies, “She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat in both hands.” Not to mention, she quickly came up with a detailed plan to make herself seem innocent. Barely convinced that Mary is devious? Well there is much more evidence

to support this opinion than you can think of. Mary is also a very devious person in that she not only killed her husband, but straightaway she decides to create an alibi to protect herself.

She was quickly able to think of an alibi as well as she also thought of the consequences of what would happen if she got caught. She was smart to find an alibi which was the grocer Sam. Before she goes to the grocery store where she would make sure the grocer will remember her as the cheerful, and doting wife, in the mirror she rehearsed a typical conversation several times with her grocer therefore she didn’t look odd or frantic. The story clarifies, "She sat down before the mirror, tidied her hair, touched up her lips and face. She tried a smile. It came out rather peculiar. She tried again." This shows that she had made a plan to could cover up her crime by acting normally and thinking that nothing out of the ordinary happened so far. Still not persuaded, well there is still one more piece of evidence that will turn you and your whole mind upside down. Mary Maloney cheated the detectives by leading them to believe she was innocent like a little lamb. However, like the saying “lamb to the slaughter”, the other side of Mary unfolded and the sweet little lamb was slaughtered and out came a cold-hearted

demon. She asked the detectives and the others if they could do her a small favor and eat the lamb, when in retrospect she was asking them for a huge favor by asking them to destroy the evidence of the crime! Mary states, “Would you do me a small favor-you and the others?” … “Why don’t you eat the lamb that’s in the oven?” In the end, she fooled the detectives by making them destroy the mystery weapon known as the lamb leg. The devious Mary really pulled her act together and managed to fool and deceive everyone. Even the detectives! Overall, you can conclude that Mary is a devious person who accidentally killed her husband; the one man she’s ever loved.