Lamb to the Slaughter, Roald Dahl

I crafted a found poem to illustrate the conflicts in Roald Dahl‘s ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ short story. Interstingly, ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ was also adapted into a short film back in 1958, as well as 1979. I would suggest everyone go watch either one because they are both extremely well-made. For my found poem, I used the scenes on page 4 of the story (paragraph 40). This page describes the moment Mary kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, which is the text’s climax.

My poem’s concept is centered on Mary’s frustration and shock as she kills her husband. The external conflict (person vs. person) is the tension between the two characters after Patrick reveals that he has decided to leave her. We see the internal conflict from Mary’s shock and denial with this announcement. Mary turns numb and lets her instincts control her. With a spur-of-the-moment decision, she kills her husband. This is where the main part of my poem takes place. I tried to portray Mary’s numbness by using words and phrases that were as distant and cold as possible. For example, In my poem, right after Mary swings the leg of lamb at Patrick, I say:

‘I’ve killed him’
‘Relief’
‘Smile’
‘ “Hullo Sam, she said brightly” ‘

I tried to select words and phrases that would make the tone of the text indifferent and apathetic, even when the content of the text is about committing murder. I thought in my found poem, Mary appeared to show sociopathic behavior and was very unfeeling. This accurately describes what is going on in the story as Mary is also battling reality and her demeanor is as sociopathic and crazy as in my found poem.

The artwork on my found poem is essentially just a lot of blood marks. I did this by coloring my hands with red ink and dabbing it onto the paper. I thought this would fit well with the poem because the context of the poem is well, killing people. As for the rest of the design, I decided to keep it simple and a little eerie with the overall mood to match the tone and the context of the poem. For the font of my blog, I found and used this typewriter-looking black and white theme on the ISB Blog website. I thought it fit perfectly with my concept, since it gave a sense of detachment and distance which is mirrored in the story.