lamb to the slaughter short essay

A Summary and Analysis of Roald Dahl’s ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl (1916-90), which was initially rejected for publication but was later adapted for television on several occasions. Included in Dahl’s collections Someone Like You (1953) and Tales of the Unexpected (1979), the story is about a wife who murders her unfaithful husband with a frozen leg of lamb before hatching a plan to ensure she isn’t caught for her crime.

Before we offer an analysis of ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, it might be worth recapping the plot of Dahl’s story.

Plot summary

Mary Maloney is waiting at home for her husband, Patrick, to get home from work. He is a detective. She is six months pregnant with their child. When he gets home, she pours them both a drink and notices that Patrick has drained his glass more swiftly than he usually does. He pours himself another whisky before revealing to his wife that he plans to leave her.

Mary is stunned by this revelation, and initially wants to act as though it hasn’t happened. She decides to go and get some food from the freezer that she can cook for their dinner. She finds a leg of lamb in the freezer, and when her husband announces he’s going out, she strikes him on the back of the head with the lamb leg, killing him.

Immediately she starts to think about how to cover her tracks so she won’t be caught. She puts the meat in the oven to cook. After rehearsing what she will say to the nearby grocer, she goes out to his shop and buys some potatoes and peas to go with the roast lamb. When talking to the grocer, Sam, she acts as though everything is all right and her husband is waiting for her back home.

When she returns home, she talks herself into believing her husband is still alive, so she is genuinely shocked when she sees his body lying on the floor. She phones the police to report that he has been murdered, and a group of detectives – who knew Patrick from work – show up to investigate his death.

The detectives make a thorough search of the house, believing that Patrick was murdered by a heavy metal implement. So they search for something that could have been used as the murder weapon. They remain in the house for so long that Mary offers them all a drink. They reluctantly accept and, when she is reminded of the lamb cooking in the oven, she suggests that they eat it since they must be hungry.

Again, they agree, and as they sit around the table eating the leg of lamb which killed their former colleague, they remain oblivious to the fact that they are, in fact, destroying the evidence themselves. In the next room, Mary giggles.

Dahl’s story was suggested by his friend Ian Fleming, who created James Bond. Dahl adapted Fleming’s Bond novel You Only Live Twice for the big screen; he also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , which was also based on a Fleming novel. And it was Fleming who suggested the idea for ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, telling his friend that he should write a story about a woman who murders her wife with a leg of mutton (not lamb) which she then serves to the investigating officers.

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ can be categorised as a horror story (although given the lack of any supernatural element, ‘thriller’ is perhaps a more apposite label), although we should also pay attention to the darkly humorous elements of the tale: features in keeping with Dahl’s writing as a whole.

The story reflects – but then subverts – a common trope of the early 1950s: namely, the wife as the faithful homemaker while the husband goes out to work. At the beginning of ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, Mary Maloney cannot do enough for her husband, waiting patiently and eagerly for him to arrive home, fetching his drink, asking him about his day.

But when the stability of her world crumbles in a few minutes, when Patrick tells her that he is leaving her (although it isn’t mentioned, we assume he has met someone else), she changes very quickly – and easily – from dutiful wife to cold-blooded murderer.

In other words, once the role she has settled into over the years, that of being ‘Mrs Patrick Maloney’, is taken away from her, she finds herself able to switch in and out of that role with ease. After a brief rehearsal at home, she is able to convince the grocer that she is still the dutiful wife once again: an act she performs again for the policemen.

Dahl makes it clear that she doesn’t murder her husband out of fear of being penniless without the money from him, the breadwinner of the family: he makes it clear he will continue to provide for her financially. Instead, her motive is more complex. Does she kill him out of jealousy or spite, or resentment at having conceived the child of a man who doesn’t even intend to hang around long enough to see it born?

Dahl leaves these questions open for us to discuss. Note how, in the moments preceding that decisive moment when she strikes her husband with the leg of lamb, her movements become automatic, as if she is being guided by some other force. Her unconscious? The concentrated righteous anger of ‘a woman scorned’? Dahl tells us that she ‘simply’ walked up to her husband and struck him with the lamb.

It is as if she is performing some perfunctory task, almost as though the mundane and automatic business of housework has been extrapolated to incorporate the business of murder. She doesn’t appear to lash out in a moment of fury, cold or otherwise. It is almost as if she feels she has no other choice.

There is obviously a grim irony in the method she uses to dispatch her husband. The roast joint cooking in the oven is the symbol par excellence of the good 1950s housewife, feeding her husband after a long day at work. There is also symbolism in the fact that this food, meant to be an offering from wife to husband, is used instead to kill the husband, with the deadly weapon being given instead to a host of other men (who, as policemen, are also stand-ins for the dead husband in some respects).

In the last analysis, then, ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is a short story about how easily the meek and loving housewife can transform into a cold and calculating killer. It is Mary’s sudden change that makes the story so unsettling, and the lack of remorse she shows for her crime; but her choice of murder weapon and method of disposing of the evidence make this story as much black comedy as out-and-out horror tale.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Lamb to The Slaughter — Theme Of Lamb To The Slaughter

Theme of Lamb to The Slaughter

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"lamb to the slaughter": roald dahl's sacrificial killing of criminal profiling anonymous 12th grade.

One of Roald Dahl’s most popular, anthologized, and filmed stories is “Lamb to the Slaughter.” The title is an allusion to the ritualistic killing of lambs as part of an animal sacrifice. The contextual concept inherent in the reference is that the poor lamb remains completely unaware of his horrific destiny as he led to his agency of his own destruction. The question that thus becomes relative to Dahl’s story is who—or what—is the lamb here?

The most obvious answer to some readers might be that either Mary Maloney or her husband fills that role. Patrick Maloney is unaware that his revelation to reveal the marriage is over on this particular evening will lead him to his own death. Or, perhaps it is not the victim who is the lamb, but the murderer. The story concludes with the image of Mary giggling which successfully conveys the impression that she has actually gotten away with committing the perfect murder. On the other hand, are we not constantly reminded that there is no such thing as the perfect murder? Could that last lingering image of a cackling Mary Maloney not also be interpreted differently: as the beginning of a process leading her to the slaughter of her own sanity?

Still another interpretation is that the lamb is...

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Lamb to the Slaughter

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Gender and Marriage

Throughout the short story, Mary Maloney is firmly situated in a patriarchal society—that is, a system in which men hold more power than women politically, socially, and economically. Historically, women have been often consigned to the private sphere of domestic life, as they were deemed by men to be intellectually and emotionally unfit for the public sphere outside of family and home life. Men, on the other hand, were able to move through both spheres…

Role Reversals

Dahl subjects his characters to various reversals in their traditional roles. Most prominent of these role reversals is that of Mary Maloney , whose act of murder defies the policemen’s assumptions about her and about the culprit. By physically attacking her husband, with a club-like weapon no less, Mary subverts gender stereotypes and takes on the traditionally male role of violent attacker and murderer. Her quick thinking and ability to deceive others causes the policemen…

Food/Consumption

Much of “Lamb to the Slaughter” is occupied with eating and food. At the beginning of the story, food is closely linked to domesticity and marriage. Mary ’s repeated attempts to feed Patrick demonstrate not only her affection for her husband but also the role she plays as homemaker and housewife. Similarly, Patrick’s refusal to eat Mary’s food is a rejection of that affection and foreshadows his rejection of the domestic life Mary has built…

Patrick ’s betrayal of his marriage drives the rest of the story’s plot, leading to both his wife’s betrayal and that of his colleagues. When he leaves his wife, Patrick betrays not only the love Mary has for him but also the unborn child she is carrying and their private domestic life together. At the sudden breakdown of her marriage and the world she built around Patrick, Mary commits her own betrayal by killing her…

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Lamb To The Slaughter

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Discussion Questions

How does Dahl establish an atmosphere of domestic calm at the opening of the story? What clues does he give that the harmonious mood is soon to be shattered? Make reference to foreshadowing in your answer.

Describe the relationship between Mary and her husband. How does their marriage reflect the values of 1950s society? What is the author’s overall message about traditionally assigned gender roles?

What impression does the reader have of Mary Maloney at the beginning of “Lamb to the Slaughter”? How does that perception change as the story progresses? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.

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Lamb to the Slaughter: Movie vs. Book

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Lamb to the Slaughter: Essay Introduction

Lamb to the slaughter: essay main body, lamb to the slaughter movie vs. book: essay conclusion, works cited.

Mood is the general feeling that develops in the audience after reading, listening to or watching a piece of literature. Usually, it is brought forth by the actions and words of the characters; the style of narration used, the writer’s choice of words and intonation. This paper analyzes two pieces of literature that tell the same story, Roald Dahl’s short story and Alfred Hitchcock’s movie. Both works share the title “Lamb to the Slaughter”.

In this analysis, it is clear that mood in the two pieces of literature is enhanced by the characters and how they act and speak, the manner in which the author advances the plot and the use of suspense. Both works keep the audience wanting to know what the next action will be, and this happens from the beginning to the end. In addition, every character’s actions are very unpredictable. The plots of both stories are also extraordinary since there is tension from the beginning of the story to the end. Therefore, these three factors in both pieces of literature combine to create a curious mood as the audience is anxious to know what actions the characters will take next.

The first element that leads to the curious mood in both versions of the story is the plot used in each of them. Both plots are abnormal since they contain tension at the beginning, and it dominates the story lines to the end. Such a plot is extraordinary because the audience is used to a plot whose exposition is dominated by peace and co-existence. This conventional is, usually, followed by the rising action before the crisis and finally the denouement.

This is not the case with both plots in the two versions of “Lamb to the Slaughter”. They both start when Patrick is not happy with his wife, Mary. In fact he directly introduces the conflict. In the movie, he says, “I want to leave you” while in the story, the narrator does not quote the words he uses, but simply says, “And he told her” (Dahl n.pag.). This type of plot is not ordinary. As such, it keeps the audience curious to know what will happen next. For example, when the conflict is introduced at the beginning of the story, the audience cannot predict whether the next thing to happen will be the rising action or the falling action.

Apart from the structure of the plot, both pieces of work also use extensive suspense. Suspense creates curiosity in the audience since it makes them anticipate more conflict. In the short story, for example, readers curiously wait to know what Patrick will tell Mary when he says: “This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I’ve thought about it a good deal and I’ve decided the only thing to do is tell you right away. I hope you won’t blame me too much.” (Dahl n.pag.). Another incident that creates curiosity is when Mary says: “I’ll get the supper” (Dahl n.pag.). This creates suspense since it is hard to predict whether Patrick will eat or not because he has already told Mary not to make supper for him. Suspense is also created when the narrator describes Mary’s movement when she comes from downstairs with the lamb:

When she walked across the room she couldn’t feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn’t feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now-down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at it again (Dahl n.pag.).

This description makes the reader curious to know what will happen next. The same happens in the movie. For example, when Mary swears not to let Patrick go, the audience becomes curious to know what she will do to prevent him from going (Hitchcock n.pag.). There is even more curiosity when Patrick dares her to try and stop her from going. More suspense in the movie is evident when Mary kills her husband (Hitchcock n.pag.). The audience is left guessing what her next action will be. They do not know whether she will run away, give herself up to the police or just sit and wait. Even at the end of the story, it is not clear whether the police will end their speculations by pointing her as her husband’s murderer or not. This dominant suspense in both renditions of the story creates a curious mood in the audiences of both storylines.

The last element responsible for the creation of the curious mood in both storylines is the behavior of the characters. They all behave in a manner that raises curiosity in the reader. For example, in both stories, Mary seems very restless as she waits for her husband to come back home. In the movie, she pretends to be very busy, but looks at the door every time to see whether the husband is coming or not. She rushes very fast to look at the door when her husband comes home (Hitchcock n.pag.). This restlessness in her creates a lot of curiosity in the audience. In the short story, she is also very restless:

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. There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did. The drop of a head as she bent over her sewing was curiously tranquil. Her skin -for this was her sixth month with child-had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger darker than before. When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later, punctually as always, she heard the tires on the gravel outside, and the car door slamming, the footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She laid aside her sewing, stood up, and went forward to kiss him as he came in (Dahl n.pag.).

Mr. Maloney’s behavior also causes a curious mood in the audience. He enters the house looking troubled. In the movie, he unwillingly replies his wife’s greetings and goes straight to prepare a glass of wine for himself. He does not pay much attention to what his wife tells him (Hitchcock n.pag.). The audience is likely to be curious about what troubles Mr. Maloney. In the short story, he does an unusual thing, draining his glass with a single gulp: “he did an unusual thing.

He lifted his glass and drained it in one swallow although there was still half of it, at least half of it left. She wasn’t really watching him, but she knew what he had done because she heard the ice cubes falling back against the bottom of the empty glass when he lowered his arm” (Dahl n.pag.). The audience is also likely to be curious about what troubles Mr. Maloney. They may be interested in knowing why he gallops his drink instead of taking his time as he always does.

The detectives also cause curiosity in both the movie and short story through the questions they ask Mrs. Maloney. At some point, they sound as if they are sure that she killed her husband: “There was a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and the detectives kept asking her a lot of questions” (Dahl n.pag.). Asking many questions makes the audience curious to know whether the detectives will realize that she is responsible for killing her husband or not.

In conclusion, the mood in both renditions of “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a curious one. Both pieces of literature keep the audience curious about all the events from the beginning to the end. They successfully achieve this through the characters used, the nature of their plots and the dominant stylistic device, suspense. Both of them effectively use these elements of literature in ensuring that their audiences’ curiosity is maintained from the beginning to the end.

Dahl, Roald. n.d. Lamb to the Slaughter . Web.

Hitchcock, Alfred. “Alfred Hitchcock Presents Lamb to the Slaughter”. Online video clip. Schooltube . 2011. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2020, June 25). Lamb to the Slaughter: Movie vs. Book. https://ivypanda.com/essays/short-story-and-movie-comparison-lamb-to-the-slaughter/

"Lamb to the Slaughter: Movie vs. Book." IvyPanda , 25 June 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/short-story-and-movie-comparison-lamb-to-the-slaughter/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Lamb to the Slaughter: Movie vs. Book'. 25 June.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Lamb to the Slaughter: Movie vs. Book." June 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/short-story-and-movie-comparison-lamb-to-the-slaughter/.

1. IvyPanda . "Lamb to the Slaughter: Movie vs. Book." June 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/short-story-and-movie-comparison-lamb-to-the-slaughter/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Lamb to the Slaughter: Movie vs. Book." June 25, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/short-story-and-movie-comparison-lamb-to-the-slaughter/.