Literary Analysis Of Lamb To The Slaughter

Rohl Dahl’s short story, Lamb to the Slaughter, is psychological thriller that sequences Mary Maloney’s rapid descent into madness, which started with murdering her husband. Dahl spends the first few paragraphs of the story setting up Mary’s character to be a doting and loving wife. A stark contrast to the murder she committed in cold blood, despite all that though, it can be argued that this murder would bet categorized as second degree. As stated before, Mary Maloney is set up to be a doting housewife who is patiently waiting for her husband to return home from work. She does everything for Patrick, without a second thought, all to please him. The only characterization for Patrick Maloney is that he is a detective, he just came home from work, and at this point in the story he seems annoyed by Mary. This causes Mary to be a bit “on edge”, to the point of becoming frightened when he refuses her offers of getting him another drink or making him dinner.

The height of her fears come true later in the story when Patrick tells her something. What he tells her is left completely vague and the reader does not really know what he said, but it can be assumed that he is divorcing her. To Mary, this is the worst thing to happen to her and she shuts down mentally and emotionally. She goes into auto-pilot making dinner, an action that she thinks is “useful” to her husband. Going down into the basement and grabbing a leg of lamb, she returns to see Patrick dressing and declaring “I’m going out.” This causes something in Mary to snap. Using the leg of lamb, she strikes a blow to Patrick’s head which kills him