Lamb To The Slaughter Mary Maloney's Character

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Love, an intense feeling of deep affection. Sometimes the strongest feelings cause us to do insane things without thinking. This is continuously indicated in the short story, Lamb to the Slaughter, by Roald Dahl when Mary Maloney, a simple housewife, murders her husband, covers up the crime with an alibi, and then again when she sheds pure tears over the death of her husband, Patrick Maloney. When Mary Maloney is distraught by her husband's unruly news of leaving her, she clearly overreacts when she brutally betrays him. Throughout the short story, her character continuously changes when she is faced with conflict and solution. In his short story, Dahl masterfully uses change in character to prove the fact that strong emotions can make people do crazy things. …show more content…
As evidence, Mary unsteadily handles the news that her husband will no longer take care of her and her unborn child she acts without thinking when Dahl tells us, “A leg of lamb. She carried it upstairs holding the thin bone...At that point Mary simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen lamb leg on the back of his head”(Dahl 2). This demonstrates how Mary’s character has changed for the worse and proves how upset Patrick made her. Furthermore, if Mary wasn’t hurt by her husband to the greatest extent, she would have paused to think through her horrendous actions soon to follow. Consequently, when Dahl says, “without a pause”, it proves that Mary was deeply affected by Patrick. In the same manner, it shows that Mary’s character has changed to prove the theme of the book that is, emotions can make people do crazy
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