Lamb To The Slaughter & The Speckled Band

Lamb To The Slaughter & The Speckled Band

The mood at the Beginning of both stories is calm but there is a bit

of tension. In the Speckled Band some of the words help to capture the

mood like glancing, terrible and tragic. In Lamb to the Slaughter the

words that help to capture the mood are warm, clean, empty and

waiting. At the beginning of both stories you can't really tell what's

going to happen. I think at the beginning of both stories, Lamb to the

Slaughter is more appealing because there is a lot more tension and

its more interesting than The Speckled Band. Lamb to the Slaughter and

The Speckled Band are both like traditional detective stories because

they're telling about past crimes.

Both villains are not alike very much because the way it describes Dr

Roylott is very different from the way they describe Mary Maloney.

They describe Dr Roylott by using words that relate to animals and

words that describe big and old, for example huge man, large face,

wrinkles, evil passion and bile-shot eyes. On the other hand they

describe Mary Maloney as a quite women for example "Her skin for this

was her sixth month with child had acquired a wonderful translucent

quality, the mouth was soft."

Mary Maloney's behavior was very different from Dr Roylott's as the

way they describe Mary Maloney as she is a normal house wife who

doesn't work and wouldn't hurt a fly. Whereas Dr Roylott behavior was

one of a killers by the way he acts, looks and talks to people. I

don't really think Mary Maloney was planning to kill her husband, I

think that it was a spare of the moment thing.

I don't think anyone would think that Mary was capable of murdering

her husband, especially considering her husband is a detective.

However Dr Roylott is capable of killing people as he is a big man. I

think that Dr Roylott is a typical stereotype of a villain as he looks

like one and acts like one. Dr Roylott and Mary Maloney are definitely

not similar. By the descriptions I think that Mary Maloney is more

complex.

During Lamb to the Slaughter I think that our attitude changes towards

Mary Maloney because we know what she is capable of. I don't think our

attitude changes towards Dr Roylott until right at the end. In both

stories the writers don't really allow us to see the private thoughts

of the villains.

For many people I think it would be surprising to have a female killer

but it shows that times are changing, it shows that Lamb to the