Lamb To The Slaughter And A Jury Of Her Peers Comparative Essay

Thesis: In these stories, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Dahl, “A Jury of her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, the wives kill their husbands, and both the husbands are at fault, which caused their murders; There are many differences, but also many similarities.

Although there are many, the reader, will see two comparisons between “Lamb to the Slaughter,” and “A Jury of her Peers”. First, in both stories the killers had help clearing the evidence away from the cops. Eerily enough, in “Lamb to the Slaughter,” the wife, Mary, had unintentional help finishing off her evidence. The murder weapon happened to be the leg of a lamb, and Mary offered up some lamb for the cops, as a sign of thanks for all their hard work, looking for her late husband. Whereas in, “A Jury of her Peers,” the woman suspect, wife of the victim, had help hiding her motives to kill her husband. Second, both stories’ victims, were husbands of high power. Both men had done something to their wives that pushed the women over the edge, and the women cleverly getting away with it. For example, in “Lamb to

For the first major difference between the stories, the two men were murdered by their wives, but the weapons were on opposite extremes. In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” the fuming wife had murdered her husband by knocking him in the back of the head with a frozen solid lamb leg. He was easily, and instantly out cold. Next, in “A Jury of her Peers,” the wife was also upset, but slyly killed him in his sleep. She waited until he was asleep, slipped a rope around his neck, and choked him to death. Now, this caused some of the investigators to suggest suicide, but that was quickly ruled out. The two officers’ wives quickly put it together, that the wife had killed him in his sleep, but they wanted to save their friend from life in prison. The two women kept all of the evidence to themselves, and carried on without a word to their