Lamb To The Slaughter Vs The Interlopers

to start a story, certain literary elements, tone, and details must be included. Even if the author has these elements, the story may not be the best it can be. Lamb to the Slaughter starts with a housewife, Mary, waiting for her husband, Patrick, to return from work. When Patrick gets home, he makes her angry, and she kills him. Mary feeds the police the murder weapon so she is not caught. In The Interlopers, two feuding men are caught by a falling tree and are unable to escape. They eventually reunite, but are most likely eaten by wolves before they can escape. In a comparison, Lamb to the Slaughter utilizes these literary elements better than The Interlopers.
In a tale of murder and innocence, Roald Dahl writes about betrayal and identity,

how it can affect one's way of thinking, and make them do things that they would regret. The main character, Mary, is waiting for her husband, Patrick, to return from work. When he comes home however, Patrick is very moody and suspicious. He delivers unknown bad news to Mary, and in a fit of disbelief and anger, she clobbers him with a leg of lamb. The police come and investigate, but are unable to find anything because Mary fed the lamb to them in the stew. To thoroughly communicate this, Dahl uses writing techniques to aid the story. The two literary elements used by Dahl are irony and figurative language. The title is a pun, because Patrick is unaware Mary is going to kill him, like a lamb to slaughter. The lamb symbolizes innocence and mercy, but it is being used for the exact opposite in the story. Then, the police did not realize the murder weapon is “right under their noses” This made the story interesting for the reader, and they are able to understand it more. To add more detail Dahl uses figurative language such as similes, metaphors, and personification. As shown in this quote "almost as a sunbather feels the sun." This shows Mary loves her husband very much and enjoys the work that she feels when he enters the room like a sunbather to the sun. Personification is used when Mary is being haunted by her husband's death- "The wind whispered in his name and tortured her with his memory." Wind is not alive, so it could not have whispered torture to Mary. The figurative language helps the reader to visualize what happened in the story, and it is more descriptive. The overall tone is somber and dark, as shown by images and sentence structure. An image that Dahl described is when Mary is talking to the police- "First a doctor, then two detectives, one of whom she know by name. Later, a police photographer arrived and took pictures, and a man who knew about fingerprints. There is a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and the detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. But they always treated her kindly. She told her story again, this time right from the beginning, when Patrick had come in, and she is sewing, and he is tired, so tired he hadn't wanted to go out for supper. She told how she'd put the meat in the oven-’it's there now, cooking’- and how she'd stopped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor.” This helped the reader understand the story and made it more interesting. The language used is intelligent, clear, and descriptive- “Occasionally one of the detectives asked her another question. Sometimes Jack Noonan spoke at her gently as he passed by. Her husband, he told her, had been killed by a blow on the back of the head administered with a heavy blunt instrument, almost certainly a large piece of metal.” The story is easier to read and can be understood by a lower reading level because it is very straightforward and candid.
In a short story written by H.H. Munro, two families are in an ancient feud that has torn them apart for many years. Georg and Ulrich, the two men, are hunting in the forest. When a tree falls on them, they are stuck without rescue. After the men reconcile, they are most likely eaten by wolves. Munro uses many literary elements to add detail to the story, including imagery, irony, diction, and details. Imagery appears in two places: when Ulrich is searching the forest- "peering through the tree trunks and listening through the whistling and skirling of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight and sound of the marauders" and when a tree has just fallen on Ulrich and Georg- " but obviously as helplessly pinioned down as himself. All round them lay a thick strewn wreckage of splintered branches and broken twigs." This image adds urgency to the story. as well as giving the reader hope that the two men might reconcile and become friends once again. Situational irony also appears on paragraph 5 of the story, when both men want to be the hero and announce how they have made up, but instead will most likely be killed by the wolves that came to attack them- ""Who are they?" asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen. "Wolves." This detail adds a reversal of scheme to the story, as the reader would have never expected the two main characters to be supposedly killed off. The diction and the word choice helped the reader understand what is happening because it is more clear-cut and comprehensive. An example is on pg 1-2 "He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in ambush on the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth." Munro is describing how Gradwitz is searching the forest, looking for Znaeym and his men. However, he did leave out a detail, what happened to Georg and Ulrich and the end of the story; if the wolves attacked them or their men are able to rescue them first. This absence of detail leaves the reader wondering what happened to them, and it ends the story with a cliffhanger. The overall tone of the story is dark and mysterious. Briefly, it becomes hopeful and happy, when Gradwitz and Znaeym become friends again, and they are excited for their men to come so they can share the good news.
In a comparison between the literary elements, Lamb to the Slaughter is clearly the superior.

As well as the terms mentioned earlier, Dahl uses sentence structure and images to compose a better story. An example of sentence structure in in paragraph 5- "She took his coat and hung it in the closet. Then she walked over and made the drinks, a strongish one for him, a weak one for herself; and soon she is back again in her chair with the sewing, and he in the other, opposite, holding the tall glass with both hands, rocking it so the ice cubes tinkled against the side." The mix of long and short sentences keep the reader interested, and adds emotion and detail to the story. The shorter sentences made the situation sound more urgent, while long sentences are more relaxed and easygoing. There are also several images described in the story, such as Mary killing Patrick- "she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head. She might just as well have hit him with a steel club. She stepped back a pace, waiting, and the funny thing is that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying.", and the interaction between Mary and Sam, the store owner- ""Patrick's decided he's tired and doesn't want to eat out tonight," she told him. "We usually go out Thursdays, you know, and now he's caught me without any vegetables in the house." "Then how about meat, Mrs. Maloney?" "No, I've got meat, thanks. I got a nice leg of lamb from the freezer." The level of detail established by Dahl helps the reader to understand the story more. The second story, The Interlopers, is far less thorough in communicating the literary elements used to make a story interesting. For example, the irony did not aid the story in the manner that Lamb to the Slaughter did. Munro did use situational irony when both men wanted to announce the reconciliation but instead are most likely killed by the wolves. The readers

did not expect this, but because of the placement at the end of the story, they did not get to have much reaction to the situation at hand. The imagery is also confusing because of the language used, like when the tree fell on von Gradwitz and Ulrich- “And before the moment of hesitation had given way to action a deed of Nature's own violence overwhelmed them both. A fierce shriek of the storm had been answered by a splitting crash over their heads, and ere they could leap aside a mass of falling beech tree had thundered down on them.” Another example is through sentence structure. The majority of the sentences are long, so while the text is very descriptive, the reader does not get the full emotional effect that sentence structure adds to the story. Those elements could have been improved to form a better story than what is provided, making Lamb to the Slaughter far superior.
Even though both authors used the same aspects to write a story, Munro could have greatly improved his usage of these principles. In the comparison, Lamb to the Slaughter clearly utilized the literary elements, tone, and details better than The Interlopers.