The Lamb To The Slaughter Analysis

Planning with Cowardice In the book “Lamb To The Slaughter,” written by Roald Dahl, was a really cliffhanger story. During the story Mary’s husband decides he wants to leave Mary after she’s already six months pregnant with her husband. Something tweaks in her head and ends his life with a leg of lamb, that she was going to cook for dinner. Once she settled down she acts fast with faking a story by going to the store and coming home to the police. She ends up using the weapon as dinner for the police.

So, he finally asked her why she wasn’t eating the chicken with his brother and himself. She responded saying that she does not hurt anything. Followed by informing him that the chicken he is eating is actually chicken. He was instantly disgusted, in shock and torn. He was not able to finish eating the chicken, he was in disbelief.

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.

For example after committing the murder of her husband, Patrick, Mary acknowledges the fact that she has killed her husband; however, continues with what she was doing beforehand as if her husband who had died by her hand wasn 't lying dead on the floor. She thinks to herself “So I’ve killed him”, then proceeds to continue cooking “She carried the meat into the kitchen, put it into a pan, turned on the oven, and put the pan inside.” It is then shown that she was genuinely guilty and felt anguish as she arrived home from the store and found her husband “knelt down beside him, and began to cry… no acting was necessary.” These differences help reveal what the two very different things people could feel after any

She confesses to God by saying, “for I must say with him, Father I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight” (Rowlandson 315). She asks God for forgiveness of her actions and choices she has made during her captivity. In her defense, she had no other option if she wanted to survive but, it is hard to tell if she is being sincere about asking for forgiveness because the next day she eats a fawn. As they were travelling, “they killed a deer, with a young one in her, they gave me a piece of the fawn, and it was so young and tender, that one might eat the bones as well as the flesh and yet I thought it very good” (Rowlandson 316). She has driven herself to a lower level by eating a piece of a fawn, that they pulled out of the deer’s stomach.

The soldier didn’t listen to what Mama Elena had said about allowing nobody inside the house. He started to walk towards the house and Mama Elena shot the chicken out of his hands. Mama Elena was being protective which is a quality of a mother. Later in the scene when Mama Elena is protecting her house, she says she would rather die than let them in the house. Mama Elena says,”If we die, no one will miss me very much, but won’t the nation mourn your loss” (Esquivel 90).

The audience learns that Mary Maloney "swung the big frozen leg of the lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head" (pg. 360). Swinging the lamb of leg on her husband, killed him. When the cops showed up they could not figure out the weapon as it states: "That's why it ought to be easy to find" (pg. 368).

It would have been easier for the characters in both stories to talk it out. What I think about both stories they are different because Popular mechanics involves a baby getting killed and The lamb of the slaughter the wife kills the husband but covers it up and acts innocent. The parents in the popular mechanics fight for the baby and they end up killing it. In the story The lamb

Hilly is mainly mean to people that does mean things to her or threatens her. For instance hilly fired Minny because, it was raining that day and she usually goes to the outside house and uses the restroom, so Hilly mother tells her to just go in the house but Hilly doesn’t want that because she’s black. Minny refuses to go inside the house because she knows that Hilly doesn’t like for black people to sit on the toilet that they use. Minny leaves and goes into the back, but she actually goes to the restroom; Hilly finds out and fires her. Pies Pies Pies….. That was Hilly favorite dessert to eat, but not just anyone’s pie “Minny’s Pies”.

He did not take off his jacket, to begin; he immediately moved to pour a glass of whiskey after walking into the house, kissing Mary as he did so. He told his wife that he needed to tell her something, that she might want to sit down when he did so. The news he requested Mary listen to was this: he wanted to leave Mary for another woman’s love, he wanted to divorce her. Not being able to believe this statement, Mary retreated into a state of shock, saying she would fetch the meat to cook dinner. She hoped that if she acted as if nothing happened, the information wouldn’t be true, the suddenly serious tone of the night would lift.