(Read from left column down then to the right column.)
My found poem is about a short story called “The Lamb to the Slaughter”, written by Roald Dahl. This story is about a husband and wife, when the husband announces that he is leaving Mary, Mary being very surprised and disappointed, murders her husband. In this story, there are many different external conflicts between the main characters Mary Maloney and Patrick Maloney. Although there are many external conflicts, my found poem is only focusing on one conflict at the climax-where Mary Maloney kills her husband with the frozen lamb leg.
The words I used are from the climax-paragraph 38-45, and also the inciting incident (paragraph 31). “What is it, darling? What’s the matter?” is when the author is giving the hint of something is going to happen later on in the story. I’ve included it because it was the start of the main conflict of my poem. “She couldn’t feel anything at all” This was after she had heard that her husband is leaving her, feeling shock and surprised. “A leg of lamb.” was when the conflict was built up to the climax. “she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her…” “she stopped.” “without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air” “brought it down as hard as she could” This is describing her actions throughout the whole conflict, describing how she hit him. “overturning” “he crashed” “the noise”, are the sounds describing what happened after she hit him, the adjectives and verbs describes her murder very clearly, it makes the whole scene more vivid and adds to the poem. Next, she is slowly bringing herself out of the shock of the murder, using words like “cold, surprised and slowly”. “So I’ve killed him”, this was the last sentence of the climax, summarizing the climax, going into the falling action. I used this phrase because it is like a restating sentence that concludes the external conflict in the story.
The background I used is a picture I found online that is the scene where Mary was still shocked and surprised that she murdered her husband. The frame around the picture resinates with the black and white theme that I was trying to present. As the black and white was expressing that the whole short story happened in the past. I have also used different text size to emphasize some important words in my poem. The title of my found poem-“The Murder by the Lamb” has two layers of meaning to it. The husband was killed by the “lamb leg” and the wife had always seemed like a “lamb” to him.
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