Lamb to the Slaughter
Essay on the short story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl
A great deal of people gets divorced. Not everyone reacts the same way, however. Some take it as another step in life but others can lash out with anger and alcohol. It all has to do with how well people can cope with the separation.
Mary Maloney is one of the ones that take the news hard; and one of the many that takes rejection to another level. A lot of people turn to the courts to settle things, but not Mary Maloney. In what seems like a rash decision, she decides to murder her husband who wanted nothing from her and only offered help to take care of her and the child, as he quotes in the book “of course I’ll give you money and see you’re looked after.”
In this story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, the main character, Mary Maloney is clearly a psychopath.
As her husband stood, facing the other direction, she walked up behind him and smashed him over the head with the leg of lamb she just removed from the freezer. “He remained standing there for at least five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet.”
Another way you can tell that she is psychotic is that even after murdering her husband, she came up with a plan to put on an act, for the police, to pretend she was surprized to find him dead. She also appeared to feel no remorse for her dead husband. She even said that she didn’t care about herself, “it made no difference to her, in fact it would be a relief.” The only thing that mattered to her was her baby who was not born yet, she didn’t know what was going to happen to it and “she wasn’t about to find out” she even got rid of the murder weapon in a clever way; she fed it to the police, right under their noses. Usually people can’t think properly after murdering someone, but Mary was surprisingly calm under the circumstances.
She also showed no remorse that she had just ended her husband’s life just because he wanted a divorce. “All right, she told herself, I’ve killed
A great deal of people gets divorced. Not everyone reacts the same way, however. Some take it as another step in life but others can lash out with anger and alcohol. It all has to do with how well people can cope with the separation.
Mary Maloney is one of the ones that take the news hard; and one of the many that takes rejection to another level. A lot of people turn to the courts to settle things, but not Mary Maloney. In what seems like a rash decision, she decides to murder her husband who wanted nothing from her and only offered help to take care of her and the child, as he quotes in the book “of course I’ll give you money and see you’re looked after.”
In this story “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl, the main character, Mary Maloney is clearly a psychopath.
As her husband stood, facing the other direction, she walked up behind him and smashed him over the head with the leg of lamb she just removed from the freezer. “He remained standing there for at least five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet.”
Another way you can tell that she is psychotic is that even after murdering her husband, she came up with a plan to put on an act, for the police, to pretend she was surprized to find him dead. She also appeared to feel no remorse for her dead husband. She even said that she didn’t care about herself, “it made no difference to her, in fact it would be a relief.” The only thing that mattered to her was her baby who was not born yet, she didn’t know what was going to happen to it and “she wasn’t about to find out” she even got rid of the murder weapon in a clever way; she fed it to the police, right under their noses. Usually people can’t think properly after murdering someone, but Mary was surprisingly calm under the circumstances.
She also showed no remorse that she had just ended her husband’s life just because he wanted a divorce. “All right, she told herself, I’ve killed