“Lamb To The Slaughter” by Roald Dahl

I created this found poem based of the story “Lamb To The Slaughter.” In The story “Lamb To The Slaughter,” Mary the presumed antagonist, is challenged

when her husband comes home from work and denies all proposals from her to help him, which worries Mary. later is is revealed to her that the husband wants to leave her for unknown reasons which at first Mary does not accept but later she eventually accepts it and goes mad, leading her to get a piece of lamb and bashes her husband on the head which leads to his death. which shows the external person vs person conflict.

This conflict is shown at paragraph 34: “And he told her. It didn’t take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word.” Which would show how this is the rising conflict leading up to the climax

The climax of this story is shown on paragraph 35: “Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn’t even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business and acted as though she hadn’t been listening, then later, when she sort of woke up again, she might find none of it had ever happened. ” At this moment, Mary has decided that she wants to murder her husband but disguises that intention by saying that she is going to cook and grabbing a leg of lamb. Although there is no definitive answer, I believe the reason she decided to kill her husband is to make him stay with her forever, which of course is just a theory.

While in my poem/story the person vs person conflict is shown also when Mary kills her husband, but in my story there isn’t much focus on the conflict of the two so it is not quite obvious.

The artwork in my poem could be easily understood. The leg of lamb obviously represents the lamb that Mary uses to kill her husband, while the hand represents Mary’s hand grabbing for the stick of lamb. the darkness also represents the darkness taking over Mary as she is going insane.

This represents the consequences of being selfish and wanting to make your own life better in turn making others life worse, and the importance of love and acceptance.