Review of 'Lamb of The Slaughter' Story

 

Title: Lamb to The Slaughter

Author: Roald Dahl

Publication Date: September 1953

Rating: 4/5

Link to The Short Story: https://theshortstory.co.uk/devsitegkl/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Short-stories-Roald-Dhal-Lamb-to-the-Slaughter.pdf

A Brief Synopsis:

This exciting story begins with the author describing the atmosphere around the main character, Mary Maloney. She patiently waited for her husband to return home from his workplace. Her husband, Patrick Maloney worked as a police officer. As he got home, she greeted him nicely like a lovely housewife doing her usual duty.

    However, the conflict began when he acted weird, as if there was some burden on his shoulders. His wife offered him dinner, yet he declined and acted sternly. Suddenly, he then told Mrs. Maloney that he wanted to leave her although she was pregnant. She tried to ignore the shocking news and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner. She took a big frozen leg of lamb upstairs where her husband was standing and she swung it to his head in a split second. Unfortunately, her insane action made him dead.

     In about a second, she regained consciousness and realized she had killed her husband. She pretended it was just a normal Thursday night and the suicidal incident did not happen. She went out to buy grocery items to prepare dinner for both of them. She returned home, pretended to have found her husband dead and immediately called the police.

    The police did their best to find the murderer as soon as they arrived. The police decided that Mrs. Maloney was not the suspect as the grocery worker said she seemed very happy to make dinner that night and it was impossible if she murdered him. At last, she offered the police officer to eat the lamb which was the murder weapon they were searching for and made the only evidence disappeared.

Likes:

Character Development:

Mrs. Maloney is the first character to be introduced. At the beginning she was a lovely wife but as the story goes on the author reveals that she has her dark side as well. She was obsessed with her husband and took extreme action by killing him because of the shocking news. Not only that, but she decided to cover up her crime because she worried about her unborn child’s fate. This proved she is a manipulative person as she acts innocent from the grocery store plot until the end of the story.

    Mr. Maloney character can be described as a serious husband towards his wife at first. He told his wife that he wanted to leave her without any reason while she was pregnant, proved he was a selfish character. In the end, he was killed by his wife.

 Writing Style:

Overall, the short story has a good plot which engaged the readers to feel a mixture of feeling and emotion. Besides, this fantastic story does not drag the reader along and all things are just in their place. Roald Dahl used a creative writing style when describing something like in the first paragraph as well as he can create suspenseful atmosphere by simply writing a story.

Dislikes:

Characterization:

Mrs. Maloney tried her best to hide her suicidal accident but maybe got trapped because of her own action when she took the risky way. For instance, she seemed too happy to cook dinner for her husband in the grocery store plot, showed she was nervous if people would discover her crime. 

Plot Holes:

Other than that, I feel like there was some missing information in the story, such as why Patrick Maloney did not tell her clearly the reason for his decision to leave his wife.  

Final Thoughts:

The whole story is presented by a third person limited narrator who tells it from Mary Maloney’s point of view. Hence, this makes the reader be on the side of Mrs. Maloney throughout the story. The reader gets to know more things than some character. For example, although the reader had known the killer but the other character did not know the killer was around them of all time. This gives the reader the urge to tell the character the secret Mrs. Maloney was hiding.

    In short, the story leaves an impact to the reader which is not every person with a nice character is the same in every situation. Everyone has a good and bad side whether it is small or huge is the difference. The story is unpredictable and has a lot of surprising plots. A good fast-paced story suits the reader to enjoy it.

Recommendation:

Roald Dahl’s writing is a great choice for the reader who enjoys twisted plot with dark theme story. Of course, it would be a pleasure to share this wonderful story with other people in their spare time. Although the author used simple words, he successfully engages the reader in his story and the exciting plots keep the reader interested in finding out how it ends.

Roald Dahl The Writer of 'Lamb of The Slaughter'