Lamb to the slaughter, by Roald Dahl

Found poem I crafted is about the internal conflict made in my chosen story, “Lamb to the slaughter” by Roald Dahl  was taken from page 4 to 5. (I chose this part because it was the climax of this story) This amazing short story was also adapted on short film. I highly recommend everyone to click and look at this film at some points.

Among the several internal and external conflicts, I focused on the internal conflict of Mary Maloney, which is the self conflict between avoiding the guiltiness of killing his husband by letting the instincts take over her behavior after murder and feeling guilty of murdering her husband. I focused on this internal conflict because I thought this self conflict is the theme of this story, which is being the perspective of murderer. As many detective fictions take place in perspective of detectives or victims, not the perpetrators, it is hard to fully understand why those perpetrators committed the crime or murdered someone, and readers often generalize them as ‘bad person’, however Roald Dahl criticize that point and wrote this story in murderer’s perspective, and the internal conflict I presented helps readers to understand and recognize Mary, who is murderer, was multi-dimensional character, who also guilt, not just crazy killer. So, the summary of internal conflict object I found will be:

Protagonist: Mary who felt guiltiness and sadness to kill her husband impulsively.

Antagonist: Mary who try not to be sentenced death penalty and justify herself that he is deserved to be dead because he cheated on someone else.

My poem shows the internal conflict in its quote such as,

“Feeling cold and surprised”

“Extraordinary relief, smile”

I tired to find quotes apathetic and insensitive in order to express the numbness and confusion of Mary. I wanted to describe two contradictory emotions that Mary have felt after she killed Patrick so that readers understand the murder of Mary with according reason, not just unfounded impulses.

I chose image of giggling clown as a background image of my poster because I think this image shows Mary who was changed after she killed her husband, giggling offended and getting any guiltiness of murdering someone, dark, and grainy, which is also mentioned in the quote, at the very end of the story:

“And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.”

I believe this image fit perfectly to my poem’s characteristic.

Thank you for visiting my blog.

TMI: My found poem was crafted with the same order from the story, top to bottom, left to right, not just scrambling the whole words.