My found poem is from a story called lamb to the slaughter by Roald Dahl, and my poem focuses on the internal and external conflict of the story. Before I get into to identifying the internal and external conflict of the story, I would like to explain about the protagonists and antagonists in the story. In “Lamb to the Slaughter” Mary Maloney kills her husband with a leg of lamb, at the beginning of the story (even though that part is the climax), and the rest of the story continues with Mary Maloney facing internal conflicts inside her mind, while she tries to fight against society when the authorities come to investigate (person vs. society). In the story, Mary Maloney had one simple goal, and that was to be with her husband, and I feel like she was the one who affected the plot and conflict of the story most so, I think that it is safe to say that she is the protagonist. Her husband on the other hand has a goal that is the opposite to Mary, to leave Mary behind, and because of his actions and his words, it leads to Mary committing murder which is where 2 main conflicts sprout. The internal conflict that Mary faces in her head, and the external conflict that Mary faces up against society, so I think he is the antagonist of the story.

In my poem, I wanted to focus on the internal conflict that Mary has in her mind because it is the most unexplained conflict and I wanted the reader of the poem to know the sadness and suffering that Mary Maloney faces because many people will focus on Mary dealing with society, while not taking a close look on how she feels at that moment, because there are multiple such as “She couldn’t feel anything at all.” (Paragraph 38 line 1), or “Began to cry her heart out.”(Paragraph 76 line 4). In the poem, I added the phrase “he’s dead.” (Paragraph 81 line 1) because that is another important part of the story, and I also added the information “she will never see him again” (this is a phrase from different words of the story) because she WILL never see him again physically and mentally.

For the different fonts that I used in the found poem, I used fonts that would best describe the specific word or phrase. For the picture I selected a man walking alone in a dark background, because I think that that really resembles Mary’s situation. She has lost everything, and she is forced to walk alone to face the consequences of her actions or whatever she does in her life.

I thought that this story was interesting. I like reading mystery novels, and I thought that analyzing the conflict and making a poem out of it was a great experience.