We know Mary Malony is obsessed with her unknowing victim, Mr. Malony, because at the
very beginning of the story, she sets everything up so perfectly and so precisely. We know this because in the story it says “Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come.” She also is looking out the window watching the clock and listening for the car. In the story it shows this by saying “When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later she heard the tyres on the gravel outside, and the car door slamming, the footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She laid aside her sewing, stood up, and went forward to kiss him as he came in.”
All this evidence points to one thing, that she is obsessed with this man. It is her blind obsession that eventually led to her killing Mr. Malony. The writer has shown that Mary Malony is obsessed with her husband, and wanted everything to be perfect when he came home, when she would cater for his every whim. She would not leave him alone for one second after he came in the door. This is how Roald Dahl portrayed obsession in Lamb to the Slaughter.
In The Tell Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe portrays obsession by repeating and further reinstating why he has a reason to be obsessed with the eye. We know this when he says “I think it was his eye, yes, it was this, one of his eyes resembled that of a vulture - a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees -- very gradually -- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” This proves he is obsessed with the old man’s eye. The narrator also says, “So I opened it -- you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --- until, at length, a single dim ray, like a thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and full upon the vulture eye.” He is referring to how slowly and carefully he crept into the old man’s room and the light from the door shining on the vulture eye. The narrator continues about the eye, “It was open -- wide, wide open --- and I grew furious as I gazed upon it.” When the narrator repeats words in the sentence this creates emphasis which shows that the narrator is dwelling on the eye.
Edgar Allen Poe shows obsession in The Tell Tale Heart, by showing repetition and a focus on the old mans eye.
I think that Roald Dahl and Edgar Allan Poe both show obsession of the main characters of their stories in different ways. This is probably because there is a gap of eighty years between when they were written. Both writers have shown distinct evidence that both of the main characters are obsessed with their victims - Mary Malony to Mr. Malony and The narrator of The Tell Tale Heart to the old mans “vulture eye”.
