The found poem I created was based off of the central conflicts with Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter.” This story tells the readers about how Mary Maloney, the main character reacts to her husband telling her that they’re getting a divorce. The story utilizes many choices of words that can inspire heavy and intense emotions, which describe Mary’s various reactions; her actions, decisions, and ultimately, the conflict.

Found Poem

Through the process of designing this found poem, I used colors like red and black in order to represent the theme. All these colors portray different moods of the text that could be felt from the conflict – ranging from the red that represents the blood that spilled from the external conflict, to the black that illustrated the darker emotions and feeling that the main character Mary felt when she was in an internal conflict with herself. The poem first starts out with the word “unusual” as Mary’s husband is at first acting really differently which leads to him explaining how he’s going to divorce Mary. During this part, there are many emotions that Mary feels but the reactions that I thought were the most impactful were her not wanting to believe it and to “reject it all.” (Pg. 3) The text itself goes further down and down as Mary herself spirals deeper and deeper into her denial that eventually leads to her killing her husband, Patrick. I bolded and made the word “reject” the biggest font as I felt that considering Mary’s situation within the story, as she was in an internal conflict with herself and wanted to desperately reject her current reality. From there on, I made it so that the word “automatic” would tell how the next few actions of Mary felt automatic, as though she wasn’t herself. The next text boxes all the way to the end only included Mary’s actions and not really the details nor her inner thoughts, because at that moment she wasn’t thinking – it was just an automatic response to her situation.

I think that one of the quotes, “Feeling cold and surprised,” is something that correlates to one of the main themes of “Lamb to the Slaughter,” which is betrayal. When Patrick betrays Mary by divorcing her, Mary gets revenge and commits her own betrayal by murdering him. When Mary does murder Patrick, it’s almost as if she couldn’t believe herself for doing this, hence “Feeling cold and surprised.”

Overall, “Lamb to the Slaughter” was a story that’s not just about Mary murdering her husband. The story delves deep into internal conflict and themes of betrayal. One important theme of this story would include a person’s true nature is overlooked based on previous assumptions. Mary truly is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.