Lamb To The Slaughter Theme

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Theme Essay of Lamb to the Slaughter

Roald Dahl’s realistic short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” is about a wife named Mary Maloney, who loved her husband very dearly, then killed him due to him requesting to leave her. Roald has cohesively weaved the characters and the setting into the theme of this darkly comical tale. What Mary anticipated to be a tranquil supper with Patrick turns out unexpectedly to be Patrick deceiving her. This abrupt and unforeseen dissolution brought up by whom she’s most comfortable and caring towards, leads her not aware of her actions. In this story, the theme that some things or people can hide their true meaning and mislead you by showing their appearance as being innocent was indicated by a misleading setting …show more content…
After Patrick hit the floor with a crash, Mary came back to her senses. She realised that if she is found guilty of murder, she may be executed; along with her baby. To avoid this unfortunate future outcome, she deliberately hides all the evidence. “She carried the meat into the kitchen, placed it in a pan, turned the oven on high, and shoved it inside.” Now, the murder weapon was hardly identifiable and noticeable. The leg of lamb’s appearance was hardly relateable to weapon. After that, Mary went upstairs to get cleaned up. “Then she washed her hands and ran upstairs to the bedroom. She sat down before the mirror, tidied her hair, touched up her lops and face. She tried a smile. It came out rather peculiar. She tried again.” Now, here appearance looked nothing like a murderer. She looked once again looked like a loving, guiltless wife. She was complete transformed when she got her tone of voice to have no hint of peculiarity. “Both the smile and the voice were coming out better now. She rehearsed it several times more. Then she ran downstairs, took her coat, went out the back door, down the garden, into the street.” And to add icing on the cake, she went out to do grocery shopping. When she called the police after she came back home, it made it look like an intruder had killed her husband while she was out grocery shopping. All of this was woven together into the police’s perception on her. Her alibi made the police not doubt her even once. She had successfully deceived
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