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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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In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by: Roald Dahl is about a wife named Mary Maloney who is six months pregnant and she adores her husband Patrick. Once Patrick told Mary that he’s leaving her for another woman, Mary whacks a leg of lamb on Patrick’s neck and dies. Dahl’s use of irony in the plot of the story are dramatic and situational. What makes this short story interesting is that we did not expect Mary to murder her own husband because she was so into him and not eat until Patrick comes home. In the beginning, before Mary kills her husband, Mary’s actions were a supportive wife, showed a lot of affection but Patrick was talking to her in short sentences.

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868 Words | 4 Pages

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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1734 Words | 7 Pages

Mary Maloney “simply walked up” behind Patrick and struck him with a “big frozen leg of lamb” “as hard as she could”. This completely contrasts the starting character of Mary as a housewife whom was patiently waiting for her husband to return home, which no one had expected. She did it “simply” which moulds an image of her not needing to think through her action, effortless and swift. The readers would be disgusted at how fast her character changes, thus suspense would be created as they would constantly question themselves about how it was possible. Additionally, after she struck her husband, she thought that it was “funny” on how “he remained standing” for a while.

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Mary Maloney in the story, Lamb of Slaughter by Roald Dahl, is the wife of Patrick Maloney. They are a lovely couple that enjoy each other. Patrick Maloney is a hardworking policemen, and he has been for a very long time. As the story starts Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home after a day of work. The story states she is without anxiety and curiously peaceful.

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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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An innocent lamb usually never expects the fate of their death, so in this case, Patrick never had suspected that his loving wife could commit such a dramatic sin, murder. Moreover, this reveals Mary’s violent side because she assassinates her unborn child’s father. Her cruelty has left her child unable to ever experience a life with her father. The interpretation of the title spotlights Mary’s malicious side finally being exposed. In closing, Mary’s drastic personality change from innocent to evil can be presented through

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To start off, in “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Ronald Dahl Mary has a conflict with her husband and she changes because of this. To show”Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come him from work. Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come... He paused a moment, leaning forward in the chair, then he got up and went slowly over to fetch himself another. “I’ll get it!”

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Planning with Cowardice In the book “Lamb To The Slaughter,” written by Roald Dahl, was a really cliffhanger story. During the story Mary’s husband decides he wants to leave Mary after she’s already six months pregnant with her husband. Something tweaks in her head and ends his life with a leg of lamb, that she was going to cook for dinner.

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"(155). This is showing that she didn’t something that she regretted because of what he told her. conclusion In “Lamb to the Slaughter” Dahl uses conflict, imagery, and direct characterization to develop feelings for Mary’s husband. This is important because the feelings Mary has for her husband are a main purpose in the story.

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Mary Maloney provides the detectives with lamb that she kills her husband, Patrick, with. When the detective declares that the murder weapon is probably right under their noses, it is ironic because the reader knows that they are eating the weapon that the detectives are seeking. Furthermore, situational irony is displayed when Dahl narrates, “At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high

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524 Words | 3 Pages

The way she addresses her husband, Patrick, is caring and compassionate. As the story progresses she gets more and more uneasy until Patrick tells her very bad news, and the entire mood of the story shifts. Mary becomes removed, cold, in shock. At this point, she “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” ( ). Patrick died within seconds.

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1237 Words | 5 Pages

Lamb to the Slaughter is an action packed short story about a wife who is let down by her husband and proceeds to kill him as an act of revenge. Obviously much more happens in this story consisting of humour, action, mystery and irony. Roald Dahl is a master of writing short stories in ways that attract readers, draw them into what is happening through using literary elements and universal themes to make the story relatable to the readers. In this story the main literary elements were foreshadowing, situation and dramatic irony, imagery and symbolism which really drew me in and kept me attached to the story. Literary elements are what make a story powerful and attracts readers to continue reading in the story and in this story they highlight the universal theme of Revenge and Betrayal.

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467 Words | 2 Pages

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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