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What Does Mary Maloney Symbolize In Lamb To The Slaughter

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The Expository Paragraph In Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the slaughter”, Mary the main character, appears to be a loyal, caring house wife. However throughout the story, through her misleading appearance, she reveals herself as an evil genius. Mary shows loyal and caring gestures to her husband, Patrick, but after she gets some bad news her kind actions turn into unpredictable actions. Which is the turning point into the story and when she becomes a shady character. For example, in the story Mary is favoring to do good deeds for her husband but he keeps denying them. After Patrick says “Listen I’ve got something to tell you” and “This is going to be a bit of a shock to you”, then tells her about the bad news. Post occurring Patrick’s news Mary becomes shady because she pretends like what had just happened, didn’t happen and to reject it all. Then she whispered “I’ll get the supper” and heads downstairs when she feels a slight nausea and has the desire to vomit. …show more content…

After we were lead to think Mary shook the whole thing off “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” and then says “so I’ve killed him”. Furthermore, after Mary’s blow up, she begins to think about the consequences after her actions. We think that Mary wouldn’t kill her husband even though she got bad news, but she had so much stress which caused her to oddly use the leg of lamb as a weapon, even when she admitted she might as well used a steel

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The way Mary holds the frozen lamb leg indicates that she is ready and wants to strike Patrick with it. Mary holds it at, “the thin end,” sort of like a club, this demonstrates that there was the motive in the way that she held the leg because she strategically held it at the thin end so that the big end would useful when she would hit

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In the short story "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney betrays everyone with her intense, violent emotions, manipulation, and selfishness when finding out about bad news. In The Lamb to the Slaughter, Mary Maloney becomes violently emotional after discovering her husband’s devastating news. During the murder, "At that point, 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" (Dahl 3). Mary’s reaction to bad news reveals how violent she is on the inside. Externally, Mary may appear like the perfect housewife and soon-to-be mother, as she is very loving, caring, and thoughtful.

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After Proceeding being told that by her husband, Mary Maloney goes out to get the supper and without any hesitation, she swings a the big frozen leg lamb at the back of Mr. Maloney’s head. The funny thing is that she had no sympathy for what she had done, instead she spent the time practicing the plan on how to cover up her crime. Her cover story indicates “When Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and he was tired, so tired he hadn’t wanted to go out for supper. She told how she’d put the meat in the oven - it’s there now cooking - and how she’d stepped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor.” This shows cleverness by showing how she has thought out her plan on how to fool the her cops into thinking she has not was not been there at the time of the

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Roald Dahl’s story “Lamb to the Slaughter”, shows a character called, Mary Maloney. Despite, slaughtering her own husband and tricking the police. She is a kind-hearted, generous and sympathetic character. To begin with, Mary Maloney demonstrates love, care, and kindness. Being six months pregnant, Mary is a loving and caring wife.

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What did they do? Mary didn 't know and she certainly wasn 't prepared to take a chance. ”So this means that Mary Maloney is a very ruthless person.

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