What can turn a loving housewife into a cold-blooded murderer?

Recently, I came across this shocking story, called “the lamb to the slaughter (video story)” by Roald Dahl, which is about a housewife killing her husband with a frozen lamb leg (Yeah, you heard me, a lamb leg), by focusing on the internal conflicts of the main character, Mary Maloney.

Before diving into the details of the conflicts, it’s also very important to first understand the key character and her motivations. On the surface, Mary seems like an average 1950s housewife – super loyal to her husband, taking care of her marriage. But when you dig deeper, it’s clear there’s a hole in her heart right now, that is her husband is starting to keep a distance with her.

Mary’s main goal was to keep her husband and save the marriage. And that is why when her husband tells her that he is leaving for a job, she immediately breaks down and commits the crime. I believe that that is why she was the protagonist. In contrast, Mary’s husband, trying to leave her for the new job, triggers Mary’s murder with his words and actions, making him the antagonist of the story.

Before Mary kills her husband, she faces many internal conflicts inside her mind. On one side, she is trying to save her marriage. According to the paragraph 25: “She moved uneasily in her chair, the large eyes still watching his face: ‘Would you like me to get you some cheese?’ she said. ‘Or have some supper. I’d like to do it. We can have anything you want.'” This demonstrates how eager Mary is to do anything she can to make her husband feel relaxed and start to value their relationship. On the flip side, she also notices the cracks of the bond with her husband when he keeps refusing all her warm offers, such as slippers, whisky, cheese and supper.

After the murder, she also faces internal conflicts. As the passage suggests, right after she kills her husband she is in shock: “The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands.” This implies that she is frightened, shocked, when she sees what is in front of her, lying on the ground, indeed, a dead body. However, even in shock, she still pretends to stay calm, as seen in the passage.  ““Hello Sam.” This was better, she rehearsed it several times more at home.” She rehearses and goes to buy potatoes so that others will witness that Mary wasn’t present when her husband died.

I constructed my poem based on conflicts above. In my poem, I added the phrase “he’s dead” (line 1 paragraph 84) to show Mary’s feeling after her husband died, followed by her heart dying and breaking into pieces. The phrase “never see him again” is to capture the fact that she will NEVER see her husband, physically or mentally.

For the different fonts that I used in the found poem, I used fonts that would best describe the specific word or phrase that can express the mood and theme of the whole story. For the picture I selected a girl sitting alone on the side of the road in the dark, since that really resembles Mary’s situation in life. She lost everything and is forced to walk alone to face the consequences of her actions or whatever she does in her life.

Overall, the story “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a very interesting short story. Diving into the complex angles of the characters and their motivations allowed me to better understand the author’s true intentions.

MLA citation:

  1. Begley, Sarah. “Roald Dahl at 100: See His Life Story in 1 Minute.” Time, Time, 12 Sept. 2016, time.com/4487573/roald-dahl-100-years-biography-video/.
  2. “Lamb to the Slaughter_哔哩哔哩_bilibili.” _哔哩哔哩_bilibili, 31 July 2019, www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ot411c79r/.