Mary, the Murder, and the Lamb

Above is a found poem made from the short story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. “Lamb to the Slaughter” is mainly about a woman named Mary Maloney, who kills her husband with the leg of a lamb after he confesses that he wants to leave her. She is then left with the choice of just turning herself in to the police or hiding the truth, which she realizes and chooses the latter after remembering that she was six months pregnant with a child.  The found poem conveys both the internal and external struggle of Mary, from a quiet and peaceful night to “love dazed, mind rejected”, which conveys the confusion and refusal to believe that her husband, Patrick is truly leaving her. This is then transitioned into “Police arrived, questions asked”, which implies that something has happened (a murder), with the “Weapon missing, skull smashed”, the whole of which deals with Mary’s external conflict. The two overall conflicts discovered are P v S (person vs. society, in which Mary hides the truth from the police and law enforcement) and P v S2 (person vs. self, where Mary deals with her own internal conflict from her husband leaving her to her killing him. There is no clear antagonist in the story, with the protagonist being Mary, as the story is mainly told from her point of view, which, while the poem does not explicitly include her name in the poem, it can be implied that it revolves around one specific person or event.