A Leg of Lamb

A Leg of Lamb The story of Mary Maloney in Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter shows that true love can go bad quick. With Mary just finding out that her husband is leaving her, there is no surprise that she would freak out especially after assuming her marriage the whole time was good. When most people are brought with such horrific news and have little to no time to digest such things, they tend to be irrational and do things beyond their moral beliefs and control. In this case Mary just so happened to kill her husband. Still, many can say it was a crime of passion, that she simply turned insane and acted out of character. Reasons for this would be the fact that Mary continued to make her husband dinner and that she also hoped that she would wake up as if from a terrible dream. No sane person either would feed close friends meat they just killed their husband with. Mary Maloney killed her husband but she was simply insane while doing it. The fact that Mary seems untouched by her husband being dead is out of character for Mrs. Maloney. She loved him so much yet he is laying on the floor and she has no emotion toward it. She decides to touch up her hair instead and prepare her words such as, “Hullo Sam..I want some potatoes please..and I think a can of peas” (P.2B) when dealing with the Grocery store employee. She is clearly acting out of character then what she really is. Yet she still insists on cooking her husband dinner even after his death. No sane person would do this. She acted as if “she was returning home to her husband and he was waiting for his supper” (P.3A). This clearly shows that she is not with it even after the the murder of her husband. Well before the murder of her husband Mrs. Maloney turned insane. After the news that her husband was leaving her she “went about her business and acted ash though she hadn’t been listening..she might find none of it had ever happened” (P. 2A). This shows that she is clearly

delusional and not mentally there.