'Lamb to the Slaughter' by Roald Dahl
...controls it and the other lies back and does nothing. Relationships like this soon fail anyway. Roald Dahl shows Mary’s unease at Patrick’s behaviour in a subtle way, as she notices a change in his drinking habit. She hears the ice cubes “Clinking” and notices how Patrick “drained” his glass “in one swallow”. She also notices the “dark yellow” of his second drink as it was “so strong”. The author continues to make the reader dislike Patrick by showing him as being selfish, as when Patrick tries to break up with his six-month pregnant wife, he thinks that money will help her and hopes that she “doesn’t” blame him, which is impossible to do, as there is nobody else to blame. If this doesn’t make us dislike Patrick, the author has made Patrick bring up his job into the matter, as he says, “There needn’t really be any fuss. It wouldn’t be good for my job.” I feel that this comment has portrayed Patrick as being very self-centred. Anyone who would say and do such things like Patrick would not make a good father anyway. So maybe Mary would be better off without him anyway. The author then manages to create Mary’s shock to this news effectively and efficiently. Her immediate reaction to her husband’s news is that she doesn’t want to believe it. Mary goes into a state of denial, hoping that she never heard what her husband said: she believed that she “imagined the whole thing”. As “ he went further and further away from her”, the reader can infer two interpretations. The first is that Mary felt that her and her husband were drifting apart in terms of the relationship. The second makes us think that Mary backed off into her own little world, becoming psychologically distanced from Patrick as she was retreating into her own thought. The author skilfully intensifies the idea of ‘automation’ in Mary’s actions, when she goes down to the cellar, by sentence structure. The absence of verbs, the list of actions broken up by commas which are introduced by the dash; “-down the stairs, the light switch, the deep freeze”. This idea of automation then backs up that Mary in still in a “dazed horror” from the news when she returns from the cellar. As when she arrives to hear the aggressive tone of Patrick as he yelled “Don’t make supper for me!” Mary in the spur of the moment hit Patrick over the head with the frozen leg of lamb, which she was planning to cook for supper. The only thing that brought Mary out of this shock was the sound of her husband’s head “crashing violently” to the ground hitting his head off the coffee table. Then Mary seeming relaxed and rational says, “Alright so I’ve killed him” and starts to think over the situation by worrying about her baby and prison. Finally she decides to work on her alibi, by going to the shop, acting normally, so no one could suspect her. Roald Dahl maintains Mary’s ‘innocence’ throughout all of this by making her act as if nothing has happened. Although I feel it is obvious that she feel guilty about killing Patrick, as she over reacts about going to prison. She begins to ask herself questions; “What about the child?” “Do they kill both mother and child?” Then finally Mary calms down to start on her alibi. When the police arrive Mary tells her story and comments “it’s there now cooking”, when referring to the leg of lamb. The author immediately draws attention to the lamb as, “it’s there now cooking”, is the only direct speech quote, when the rest of her story is written in reported speech. The police already feel sorry for Mary, as she is newly widowed and pregnant. Mary makes sure of maintaining this sympathy by asking silly little favours and pretending to be too traumatised to even get a drink; “Jack, would you mind getting me a dri...