Poem

The poem was taken as an excerpt from the 4th page of “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. The poem depicted a external person versus person conflict between Mary Maloney and her husband Patrick Maloney. For exposition, Mary is waiting for her husband to return home from working. The conflict started to reveal during the rising action of the story. Patrick Maloney told Mary something probably about him meeting another woman and shows Mary his desire for divorce. In this sentence“watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word” shows that Mary can’t believe what her husband did to her and was shocked. Mary can’t believe what happened, and at the climax of the story, Mary was so angry that she killed her husband ,that no longer loves her, with a freeze lamb. From this quote“She swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head” shows that Mary now really hates his husband and isn’t hesitating to kill him.

 

There is also a external person versus society conflict happening in this story. When Patrick Maloney said “Of course I’ll give you money and see you’re looked after. But there needn’t really be any fuss.”there is a obvious meaning of not respecting women and he thinks that he can make a divorce whenever he wants.

 

So in conclusion, this is a mainly person versus person conflict between a couple.