Roald Dhal's 'Lamb To The Slaughter'

Judah Woodruff
Capper
English 11
23 May 2023
Lamb to the Slaughter: Final Exam In Roald Dhal’s short story Lamb to the Slaughter, the protagonist of the novel, Mary Maloney, is not mentally stable while she is killing her husband. This claim can be found in the novel while Dhal is explaining her obsession with her husband, the trance-like state she was experiencing, and the humor she found in killing her husband. As Dhal begins the story, he hints at the possibilities of Mary Maloney’s mental instability. Dahl begins by explaining Mary’s extreme and unhealthy obsession with her husband writing, “She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man…She loved him for the way he sat loosely in a chair…She loved intent, far look in his eyes when they rested in her, the funny shape of the

As Dhal demonstrates Mary’s extreme obsession and fascination with the small acts her husband does he also demonstrates her insanity because as a rule, if someone has an unhealthy obsession with something else, they are demonstrating a form of insanity. To sum up, Mary Maloneys severe obsession with her husband brings the reader to believe Mary is mentally unstable. Dhal later demonstrates a more pressing example of Mary Maloney's insanity as she is murdering her husband. While Dhal writes, “When she walked across the room she couldn't feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn't feel anything at all…Everything was automatic”(Dhal 3). This leads the reader to believe that Mary is not in the proper mental state because she was left in a trance after hearing the horrible news. If someone is in a trance, then they are not in their right mind, meaning when Mary Maloney killed her husband, she was in fact