Response To Mary Maloney From 'Lamb To The Slaughter'

AS90854 Short Story Response Cathy Joe

In the short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney is the main character of the short story. Mary Malone is an interesting character who is a devoted wife to her husband, Patrick.

At the start of the short story I felt very angry that Mary was literally acting like a servant for her husband. Mary showed undying love for her ungrateful heartless husband which no one deserves. As said in the short story “She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel-almost as a sunbather feels the sun-that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together.” Patrick arrives home and she offers him supper

but he keeps denying it. Normally Patrick only drinks one glass of wine but Mary knew something was wrong when he kept drink more and more. Patrick tells Mary some shocking news which makes Mary lost of words. Mary walks to the kitchen “She couldn't feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit.” She gets out a frozen lamb leg she then walks to Patrick and without hesitating she swung the leg up into the air and brought it down as hard as she could onto the top of his head. Mary then leaves realising she killed him and goes into the kitchen to cook up the lamb. At this point in the I felt disgusted which what Mary was doing! Mary then goes to the grocery store to buy some groceries for supper with her and her dead husband. After this she goes home to cook everything up and she calls the police and says "Quick! Come quick! Patrick's dead!" the police come immediately and she tells them her she was at the grocery store and once she came back she saw the lifeless body of her husband lying there. Mary insists on the police staying for dinner and as to her wish they do. While they are eating they are discussing the weapon that killed Patrick and say it shattered his skull they all think it was a sledgehammer. One of the officers say "Personally, I think it's right here on the premises." and the story ends with Mary Maloney giggling.

Marys character is very interesting because of how she reacts to her husbands news.

Marys husband Patrick tells her some shocking news and she reacts by murdering him with a leg of lamb. Mary is pregnant and she loves her unborn child so after she murdered her husband she comes up with a quick plan as said in the short story “It was extraordinary,now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew quite well what the penalty would be. That was fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the child? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill then both-mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do? Mary Maloney didn’t know . And she certainly wasn’t prepared to take a chance.” I think this is absolutely crazy of her but the fact she can cover up the murder she committed and she deceive the detectives that she killed her husband. I think Mary is a very clever women. This is because after she had killed Patrick, normal people would panic and freak out but Mary did not. She managed to stay calm and come up with a plan on how to make herself not a suspect in the murder of her

husband.

Patricks character made me angry because he doesn’t show any respect to his wife Mary or seem interested in her presence. This makes me think back to society and how women are treated by men. In society some men are awfully rude to their ‘loved’ ones. We learn from the short story that nothing is really predictable and you never know what is coming at you. I think Mary should not have acted upon his message to her and just left him instead of killing him. This is a very violent way of reacting to something. It is the wrong message to portray to people. Young children read books by Roald Dahl and what if they come upon this story?!! This is absolutely ridiculous. To be honest here Roald Dahl did make this short story really interesting and the tone of it is dramatic and displayed heaps of irony.

In conclusion this “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl for me has its pros and cons. This short story has a major twist which is why I liked it, but what I don’t like that Roald Dahl is known to write children’s books and if a child were to read this they might get the wrong message and react to situations with violence.