Lamb to the slaughter door Roald Dahl

Title

Lamb to the slaughter

Writer

Dahl, Roald

Place of story

regular, at home

Genre

thriller, unexpected turn

Characters

belong to the middle classes

Main characters

Patrick and Mary Maloney

Summary

Mary Maloney waits for her husband (whiles she’s pregnant), who tells her he will leave her. Although she is stunned, she wants to make supper. Gets a leg of lamp – frozen – and in an impulse she kills her husband with it. Pretending nothing has happened, she goes shopping. Mary calls her husband collegues and shoves the leg into the oven. The collegues search for the murder weapon. Finally she offers them the leg of lamb to eat.

About the title

1) Literally: the leg of lamb is eaten. 2)
Lamb = Patrick; or Bible: Jesus was crucified.

My personal opinion

I enjoyed reading the story. There is a certain psychology in the story, but you must see the story through to find it. I have never read another story like this one, but would certainly recommend it to someone else, if he/she likes these kinds of stories. When you stop reading, you actually don’t. You haven’t really finished the story when you haven’t thought of it futher.

Optional assignment

paper article.
Yesterday a man was murdered in our quiet little city. ‘The man has been killed in his own house, while his wife was away to do some shopping for supper. When she came home, she found her husband lying dead on the floor of the living room. Although she was stunned, she has been able to contact us. We expect the man has been hit by something large and hard. That we found out after research with the body. We didn’t find a murder weapon. Also we don’t have a clue who it could be, because no-one has seen anything.’ Thus the chief of our police department. The wife is still in a shock, but has already let known that she will do as much as she can to find the murderer of his husband.