Comparing Lamb To The Slaughter And The Necklace

"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude." Such is true for the characters Mary Maloney of Dahl’s “Lamb to Slaughter” and the narrator of Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart” whose relationships are greatly impacted by attitudes. In “Lamb to Slaughter”, Mary kills her husband and covers up the fact that she killed him. Meanwhile, the narrator in “Tell Tale Heart”also attempts to cover up his murder of the old man, but fails. Ultimately, Mary and the narrator both behave similarly when affronted with conflict.

Realizing she needs to do something she thinks of a alibi. She goes to the grocery store and invites the cops over for dinner. They eat the evidence leaving her off the

On July 24, 2002, David Lynn Harris was brutally murdered. David had been seeing another woman in secrecy; when his wife, Clara Harris, found out, she ran over him three times with their daughter in the passenger seat witnessing everything. Clara was sentenced to 20 years in prison along with a fine of $10,000. Just as Clara was found guilty, so should Mary Maloney from the short story, Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl. This story was based in the fifties and clearly shows the roles of men and women. However, when Patrick, the husband of Mary, came home, he spoke of bad news and Mary hit him on the head with a leg of lamb, hence the name of the story. Readers can automatically come to the conclusion that Mary Maloney is guilty. Her mental stability before, during, and after the incident, the logical cover up story, and her emotions and actions towards her wrong doings all prove that she was aware and responsible for the hostile act towards Patrick, and therefore should be proven guilty.

In “A Lamb to Slaughter”, Mary Malonee killed her husband Patrick Malonee. Her motive behind the crime was because Patrick was leaving her all of the sudden. Patrick Malonee did not treat Mary well at all. He didn’t tell her why he was leaving but in the story there were different possibilities to be inferred such as, Mary being pregnant or Patrick was having an affair. Mary thought of everything to cover up the murder. She was worried about what they would do to her baby if she would have been caught. The story takes place in small town in the 1950’s and back then people weren’t so knowledgeable when it came to things like figuring out those crimes. Mary was underestimated because the police never once thought that it could have been her that

she said” (Dahl 67). The landlady kept Billy from finding out what happened, by interrupting him, to the other two guests and what would happen to him when he stays there. Mary Maloney, in “Lamb to the Slaughter”, put the murder weapon in the oven to hide the evidence, and she got an alibi by talking to Sam, the grocer. Mary rehearsed what she would say to Sam after she killed Patrick. After Mary rehearsed and got ready, she walked down to the grocer and talked to Sam about buying dinner for Patrick.

Which is after the killing happened. Mary then goes and plans her alibi after. Once her state of mind became clear, she thought about what her punishment would be. She quickly considered her unborn child. Mary had no clue of what they would do to her and her child. Her unborn child meant a lot to her so she did not want to risk it. Then she went upstairs to fix herself. She then repeated multiple times of what she was going to say to the grocery store worker.

I believe that the reader of the short story “Lamb to the Slaughter” roots for Mary to get away with the murder she committed for the reason that the author uses several different means to get the reader to empathize with her character. Probably the most crucial strategy the author utilized to force the reader to empathize with Mary was to place the entire story in her perspective, placing emphasis on the emotions she feels. We immediately identify Mary as the protagonist of the story and presume her character to be one who acts with good intentions, thus making us empathize with her. Through the dialogue between Mary and Patrick, we understand that Mary is a very loving and devoted wife, as opposed to Patrick, who seems to act cold and unappreciative

On December 15th, 1971, the first X amendments to the Constitution went into affect. The first X amendments to the constitution were known as the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment was written by James Madison because the American people were demanding a guarantee of their freedom. The First Amendment was put into place to protect American’s freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and freedom of petition. The First Amendment was written as follows;

When humans entered the Iberian Peninsula almost 32000 years ago, the first civilization of Spain was formed. Since then, the country has traveled from an era of prehistoric Iberia to the Middle Ages to a rise as an empire and a member of the European Union .

For example, after knocking her husband out with a frozen lamb leg, she puts the leg of lamb in the oven for dinner. Then she goes to the grocery store to get potatoes and peas where she has a friendly conversation with the grocer Sam. Mary tells Sam that they are eating in tonight because Patrick is too tired to eat out. When Mary returned home she called the police to tell them Patrick is dead. Mary explains to the police how she fund her husband on the floor dead when she got back from the grocery store.

“Please eat it” she said. Firstly she knew what do because she was the wife of a detective. Secondly she made the detectives think that she was “sad” and she wasn’t the one who killed her husband by using the techniques that she learned with him. She did everything to make the detectives think she wasn’t the one who killed Patrick, and she used her position ads his wife to help her self.

She calls the police after she killed her husband, “Quick! Come quick! Patrick is dead!” (321) This shows that she is assuming the guise of a wife that found her husband dead. Mrs. Maloney persuades the police to eat the leg of lamb,” It’d be a favor to me if you’d eat it up,” She says this because she is a cunning murderer. Mrs. Maloney has changed, yet she acts the same and even fooled the police.

The story of "The Necklace" does a better job of showing situational irony than "Lamb to the Slaughter" because "The Necklace" detailed and included more specific reasonings to what happen. Therefore, both stories did show situational irony but i think that "The Necklace" had more about it. In both stories, they had a situation that lead the conflict of situational irony which then concluded the stories by somehow solving the conflict.

Her act continues when the police arrive, offering them the cooked lamb, which they unknowingly ate, literally destroying the evidence.

It is human nature to question the meaning of life and for the individual to question their own purpose. The phrase “fate or free will” often comes up when questioning ones purpose in life. Is life predetermined and the individual has no control? Or rather can the individual take charge and choose their own path in life. Existentialists believe that humans are born first and that life is meaningless until the individual defines their own purpose. It is the belief that one's existence precedes one’s essence. In both the late 16th century play Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (a play within a play based on Hamlet) ideas of existentialism are explored. The later play builds upon the ideals developed in Hamlet and confirms that Hamlet is indeed an existential play. This is evident as the main characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are more object like than human and can therefore be considered existential objects, which then forces readers to look at Hamlet as an existential hero. This is because Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exist only in the present and lack free will, in contrast to Hamlet. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern question the absurdity of life and death and what it all means, much like how Hamlet explored the absurd. Tom Stoppard meticulously crafted the two minor characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet and put them center stage in his own play and gave them existential object qualities, which was contrast to Hamlet’s character and confirms the idea