My found poem that I made was taken from the 4th page of Roald Dahl’s ‘a Lamb to the Slaughter’. There are two conflicts in this story, one between Mary Maloney (the protagonist) and her husband and one between Mary Maloney and the police. Both conflicts are man vs man external conflicts. In the rising action of this story, Mary Maloney’s husband, Patrick Maloney, returns with an announcement that he is divorcing her, as it would be better for his job. Mary Maloney, who was prepared emotionally only for the ordinary, was obviously confused about this, shown by the quote “She lowered herself back slowly into the chair, watching him all the time with those large, bewildered eyes.” Her feelings of numbness, of loss, peak with her, swinging “the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and…(bringing)… it down as hard as she could on the back of his head” resulting in his death. Strangely, Mary Maloney does not seem to regret her husband’s death all that much, and is much more concerned about what would happen to a murderer’s unborn child, clearly shown with the line, “On the other hand, what about the child? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill them both — mother and child?”. I really do hope that the people reading this poem notice Mary Maloney’s mentality, and that wraps up one of the two major conflicts of this story, and the conflict I based my poem on.
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