The hero of ‘The Speckled Band’ is obviously Sherlock Holmes; we can tell this as he is portrayed as a very caring character, for example Ms. Stoner says ‘Mr. Holmes; I have heard of you from Mrs. Farintosh, whom you helped in her hour of sore need.’ You can also tell Sherlock Holmes is the hero as he is very helpful to Ms. Stoner, he says ‘I can only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote the same care to your case …’ this shows he is a caring person. In ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ the detectives are the police, as they attempt to solve the murder, but are unsuccessful as they eat the murder weapon. It is quite obvious that Sherlock Holmes is the more successful hero as although the police seem caring towards Mary Maloney; Mr. Holmes is successful in solving the murder.
The villain in ‘The Speckled Band’ is clearly Dr. Roylott, as he commits the murder of his step daughter Julia, for the money we can tell that Dr. Roylott is a bad person as Helen stoner tells Mr. Holmes ‘He became the terror of the village.’ this shows that everybody was scared of him. The villain in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is indistinct as Mary Maloney did kill her husband, but it wasn’t intentional as such, but you could say that because Patrick had betrayed Mary’s trust, by tell her he was leaving, whilst she was pregnant, that he was partly a villain as well. However the fact that at the end of the story it says ‘And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle’ shows that she was happy she had got away with the crime. This therefore makes her the villain as it shows that she was not sorry for murdering her husband and glad she had got away with it. Mary Maloney is not such an obvious villain as Dr. Roylott, as she seemed loving towards her husband at the start of the story, but overall she is still a bad character.
The victim of ‘The Speckled Band’ is plainly Julia because she was killed by her step father Dr. Royott and Helen as she was being abused by him. The victim in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is Patrick Maloney, who was killed by his wife, a quote to show this is “At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.” Although you could argue that because Patrick had betrayed Mary’s trust, by tell her he was leaving, whilst she was pregnant, that she was partly a victim as well.
The two crimes are very different, but are both still murders. I think that Mary Maloney’s murder wasn’t intentional, just a reaction to the shock that the man she loved was leaving her with their unborn child. But Dr. Roylotts murder of Julia was planned, and he had took time setting up how he was going to do it, I think this makes him a worse murderer than Mrs. Maloney.
In Lamb to the Slaughter, the use of modern language automatically makes it easier to understand; where as The Speckled Band was set in the 19th century, so the story has more complex words. The type of transportation used shows it is not a modern story as well. A ‘dog-cart’, ‘’ … You must have started early and yet you had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached the station,’’ this quote was said by Sherlock Holmes to Helen Stoner, this method transportation was used at the time. A Victorian audience would have reacted differently to how a modern day audience would have to the Speckled Band. Victorians were not as open minded as the average person is today. One of the things that were brought to the reader’s attention was the fact that a gypsy was considered to be totally terrible, and as Dr. Roylott was allowing these gypsies to stay on his land it would have shown him in a bad light to the Victorian readers. A reader today wouldn’t have thought that a gypsy would have been that bad, as society today is much more accepting. Women are treated better with more respect today, as in ‘The Speckled Band’ Helen is treated badly by her father. I think a Victorian audience would have been much more shocked at the fact that Mrs. Maloney could get away with a crime such as that.
The structures of the two stories are very different, with The Speckled Band story unfolding in chronological order, finding out the murderer right at the end, but in the Lamb to the Slaughter, the murderer is known at the beginning of the story. The two stories are seen from two different points of view, first-person narrator in The Speckled Band as Dr Watson character within the story and therefore limited in understanding and the all-knowing third-person narrator in Lamb to the Slaughter as the narrator stands outside the story itself and guide the through reader's understanding of characters and the significance of their story. Most murder mysteries have the typical victims, murderers, and detectives.
But overall I prefer ‘The Speckled Band’ written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as I prefer its more classic style and I think the way the murder was carried out was much more interesting than being him with a leg of lamb, although both ways in with the murders were conducted don’t seem that plausible in my opinion.
