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How Does Roald Dahl Use Irony In Lamb To The Slaughter

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People close the curtains of the window when they know something bad is going to happen. The “Lamb to the Slaughter,” by Roald Dahl wrote a significantly great job at writing this short story when the housewife had been welcomed home to a disaster. Irony is something that someone does and we don't expect it. There are three different types of irony: ironic, dramatic, and situational irony. He had used different kinds of irony to build suspense and have the power to make people have the desire to continue reading it. Roald Dahl used his skills to write a fabulous story that has foreshadowing and a lot of irony. In this short story there seems to be a lot of irony. The author did an excellent job with it making it super intense and interesting. For example “Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause 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 (5).” This is situational irony because the reader wouldn't have expected a loving pregnant wife who loves her husband to kill him with a leg of lamb. No one would have expected her to kill her husband because he wanted to have a divorce. Roald Dahl was amazing writing the story making it build suspense to the readers. …show more content…

He uses dramatic irony because when the investigators came the wife offered food that happened to be the murder weapon. But this time we knew what was going to happen because its dramatic irony when the reader knows what's going to happen. For instance, Mary begged “Please eat it. Personally I couldn’t touch a thing, certainly not what’s been in the house when he was here. But it’s all right for you. It’d be a favor to me if you’d eat it up (10).” So we know they are going to do her a favor and eat the murder weapon without them knowing. This makes the short story more intense and

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