When anger pervades the mind, things are said that can never be taken back and fists are flung without a conscious thought. The actions a person may commit when they’re angry is not an accurate representation of their character nor of the way that they react to everyday life. In this manner, Mary Maloney finds herself in the impossible situation of a dead husband and the murder weapon slowly defrosting in her hands. Although critics acclaim that this gentle tempered homemaker had no inclination to be a murderer which would make the plot improbable, the evidence presented by the text states that the plot was indeed set up for the murder of Mr. Maloney. Mary Maloney kills without intent but once realizing the weight of her actions, switches to …show more content…
a fight or flight mode of thinking therefor rendering the plot probable. Mary Maloney, six months pregnant with eyes having “a new calm look” (1).
It is common knowledge that pregnant women are prone to fits of moodiness but it would appear that Mary is in a new state of calm and happiness with the partial euphoria of a new born child. Mary is happy with the life she is living and especially happy that her husband would be home soon as she loved “the shape of his mouth and . . . the way he didn’t complain about being tired” (1). That is very important because when he sits down he says to her, “I’m thoroughly exhausted” (1). This is a signal something is very wrong. Now, critics may say that it was a mere phrase that was out of the ordinary and it proves nothing, but Mr. and Mrs. Maloney are creatures of habit. So, Mr. Maloney comes home to a pregnant wife who has worked hard all day to get the house sparkling clean for him and he tells her he is leaving her. To a pregnant women, the full force of this announcement would be much more than the effect it would have on a non-pregnant women. Mary Maloney is the type of wife that only wants to make her husband happy so it would appear that Mary Maloney is also the type of woman to hide her feelings away, even during pregnancy when her emotions are taking major dips and rises. It only takes so much before all the emotion that has been tucked explodes into drastic action, oftentimes unintentionally and without
thought. Furthermore, Mary Maloney is in shock. Shock is the brain’s way of protecting the given person’s sanity by only allowing them to experience the emotional level that they can tolerate. Shock victims automatically move towards routine, or anything that is normal. Mary Maloney leans toward cooking dinner, “blindly lifting out the first object she found . . . a leg of lamb” (2). As she swings the leg of lamb the back of Mr. Maloney’s head, she “simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung . . . and brought it down as hard as she could” (2). After the murder is committed “the violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock” (2). Roald Dahl specifically points out that she is in shock in order to make the plot probable. She swung without conscience thought, it was merely a reaction to her husband’s brusque reply of “Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out” (2). Suppressed emotion and shock caused an irrational action of which she acted then thought about the irrationality of her action later. Finally, a critic is bound to say that the plot of Lamb to the Slaughter is improbable because of the change in Mary Maloney’s demander after the murder is committed. But, a fight or flight reflex has kicked in at that point, not for the survival of Mary, as she thinks “As the wife of a detective, she knew what the punishment would be . . . in fact, it would be a relief” (2). She is concerned about the survival of her child as she “wasn’t prepared to take a chance” (2). As the wife of a detective, it is for sure that her husband had told her about cases he had worked on, therefor, she knows what she needs to avoid discovery and that is an alibi. Once again, fight or flight which is why her mind became so clear all of a sudden. Because she didn’t know what would happen to her unborn child if she was to be stuck with a murder charge, her maternal instinct drove her to protect her child in any way possible, including creating an alibi that would hold up under police investigation. Maybe she will get away with murder and maybe she won’t, although all the evidence shows that she will indeed get off scot free if she keeps her mouth shut, but the most important item presented by this plot is that this short story is indeed probable as Roald Dahl set up for the unfortunate ending of Mr. Maloney through a series of clues and small hints sprinkled throughout the plot, barely there, but enough to convince a critic that the climax was set up for.
Often people are not what they seem. According to Roald Dahl, in “Lamb to the Slaughter,” “But there needn’t really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn’t be very good for my job.” When in public Patrick Maloney was the doting husband, but when the doors hid outside eyes Patrick revealed his true feelings. He wanted a divorce. He wanted to ruin his wife and soon-to-be child, but without anyone knowing. Thought the passage, the tone is revealed as condescending. The way Mr. Maloney talks to his wife is as though she is a small and unknowing child.
... treats Piney as her own child, and is moved with the couples love. After ten days of living in the cabin, she died from starvation. She requested to Oakhurst to give the rations she has been saving to Piney. He felt all them were already hopeless, so he ordered Tom to hike to Poker Flat and try to get some help. After a couple of days, when the help arrived in the cabin, the found two women huddled together, frozen to death, and close by Oakhurst was found with a gun near him, a bullet right through his heart, and a suicide note saying “Beneath this tree, Lies the body of John Oakhurst, who struck a streak of bad luck on the twenty third of November, 1850, and handed in his checks on the seventh of December, 1850.” (Harte 458). This story shows that people can change their life when they want to, and that anyone can develop feeling despite whatever they did before.
The narrator, a new mother, is revoked of her freedom to live a free life and denied the fact that she is “sick”, perhaps with postpartum depression, by her husband, a physician, who believes whatever sorrows she is feeling now will pass over soon. The problematic part of this narrative is that this woman is not only kept isolated in a room she wishes to have nothing to do with, but her creative expression is revoked by her husband as we can see when she writes: “there comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word (Gilman,
This examination will look at the short story “Killings” by Andre Dubus and the main characters in the story. The story begins on a warm August day with the burial of Matt and Ruth Fowler’s youngest son Frank. Frank’s age: “twenty-one years, eight months, and four days” (Dubus 107). Attending the funeral were Matt, his wife Ruth, their adult children and spouses. Matt’s family is extremely distraught over the murder of their youngest son/brother, in their own way. There are implications of wanting to kill Richard Strout, the guy accused of being the murderer: “I should kill him” (107), as stated after the service. This comment is considered a fore-shadowing of what is to come in the thought progression of Matt and Ruth.
On a cold northern morning the body of a man lay still in his bed. His blood did not flow, his heart did not beat, and his chest didn’t fall with breath. His wife sits still downstairs in the gloomy house that she views as a cage. Her stare is blank and her hands move slowly as if she is in some trance that shows absolutely no remorse. Minne Foster is guilty of murdering her husband which becomes apparent through the evidence and details given by Susan Glaspell in “A Jury of Her Peers”. Glaspell gives evidence and shows the realization that both women in the story also know that Mrs. Foster is guilty. Minnie Foster is guilty of murdering her husband, but a defense could be made to protect her.
Life. Life is what gives you the ability to think, to speak, to breath and to be a part of this world. It is worth more than any amount of money, your life is priceless. Without it, we would seize to exist; our world would be utter darkness. Honourable Judge, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, today Mary Maloney stands on trial before you. A woman who took the away the life of not just an innocent citizen, but her very own husband. She was thought to be an ordinary women, a typical housewife and a soon to be loving mother. However, the facts presented before you today conclude that Mary Maloney was not just an unordinary detective’s wife, but also a murder. On April 13th 1953, the life of Patrick Maloney came to a tragic end because of leg of lamb in the hands of Mary Maloney. For the following reasons, Mary Maloney, wife of the deceased, is guilty of 1st degree murder.
The makeup of the novel consisted of pieces from McCandless’s diary and letters to friends, but they did not make up the entirety of the story. McCandless pieced together evidence of the fatal adventures of McCandless and included his own personal interpretation of what occurred, causing uncertainty about the accuracy of this non-fictional literature. In the author’s note he said, “But let the reader be warned: I interrupt McCandless's story w...
The analysis showed that Shirley’s and Thomas’s work matched in a way that both the stories reflect identity crises and the psyche of a killer. The notable use of typical fictional horror elements such as tragic backstories, harbingers, unseen forces causing chaos and dreadfulness, terror and above all unrealistically portrayed personality disorders makes the stories a baroque blend of supernatural fantasy and moral reality.
Before going into why I think the narrator has postpartum depression, I would like to discuss what it is. Postpartum depression is, " a complex mix of physical, emotional and behavioral changes that occur in a mother after giving birth"("WebMD"). The causes of this illness can be hereditary and can be changes in most women's hormones. Most mothers who experience postpartum depression love their children but feel that they won't be good at mothering. (HealthyMinds.org). An example of this in the story is when the narrator is discussing what little she can do and says, "It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous." (Gillman 105) We see from this quote that the narrator doubts her ability to take care of her baby.
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.
The narrator is forbidden from work and confined to rest and leisure in the text because she is supposedly stricken with, "…temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency," that is diagnosed by both her husband and her brother, who is also a doctor (1).
Devising the perfect murder is a craft that has been manipulated and in practice dating back to the time of the biblical reference of Cain and Abel. In the play, “Trifles” exploration is focused on the empathy one has for a murderer who feels they have no alternative from their abuser. As a multifaceted approach, the author Glaspell gives her audience a moral conflict as to whether murder should be condemned based on the circumstances rather than the crime. Presenting Mrs. Wright as the true victim of the crime of domestic abuse rather than a murderer gives Glaspell a stage which shows her audience the power of empathy.
One of Dahl’s most prominent styles used to highlight betrayal throughout the story is point of view. The point of view of the story is told in is third-person limited, meaning the reader only gets to read the thoughts of one character. That character was Mary Maloney, the main character and wife of Patrick Maloney. Hearing only one characters view of events can make readers opinions biased, meaning the feelings they feel towards characters are from the influence of Mary Maloney. The readers do not know what Patrick Maloney is thinking so it is hard for readers to sympathize him in the beginning of the story when he tells Mary he wants a divorce (Dahl). As one critic stated, readers are unable to see into his mind, he is immediately marked as the antagonist (Bertonneau). Another critic believed that having no knowledge of his motives made his actions seem inexcusable.
Mary Bell was a murderer, sadistic torturer of her victims, and a victim, more importantly she was a child. At the age of 10 Bell had killed two boys before the age of eleven. Growing up in the financially depressed town of Newcastle in England, in which Bell lived an impoverished life. Bell was born to her Betty Bell, a prostitute who suffered with mental illness and her father, presumed to be Billy Bell, a lifelong criminal who had a history of violence and was frequently unemployed. At the time of Mary’s birth, her parents were not married, and only married a few years after her birth.
After casually meeting the rape victim, Teena Maguire, and then being called to her crime scene, John Dromoor goes on a hero’s journey, starting with the hearing in September 1996. When madness ensues in Judge Schpiro’s courtroom, “Dromoor had seen the derailment. Sick in the gut, had to escape” (Oates 75). It is just a month after that Dromoor begins to take matters into his own hands in order to protect Teena and her daughter. By shooting James DeLucca with deadly force, an act that can be considered by some one of a madman, Dromoor asserts himself as the family’s protector and ‘hitman’. In his further actions, seeking out and likely being the killer of the Vick brothers and Fritz Haaber, Dromoor does what he knows the Maguires are desiring: to feel safe. Dromoor has a serial killer gene in his body, using his victim’s weaknesses to lure them to their death (i.e. Fritz Haaber’s affection towards young girls), but the reader knows that he is so meticulous because he wants the best for the Maguires. When the young daughter of the victim feels sad, Bethel Maguire calls the man that she knows can protect her, John Dromoor, and says, “Help us please help us John Dromoor we are so afraid” (Oates 120). Then, after seeing the convict that scared her the most, Fritz Haaber at the mall, Bethie confides in her grandmother to make her aware of Haaber’s presence at the mall purely because she knows that her