Lamb to the Slaughter was written by Roald Dahl. It was first published in 1954.
Lamb to the Slaughter has use of present day modern language so automatically gives the impression that it is written in present day modern and now. Roald Dahl was most famous for writing children stories but he did also write some books for adults like the tales of the unexpected which lamb to the slaughter featured in.
Roald Dahl always writes about ordinary people who some how get involved with difficult problems with a dense solution in his adult stories.
I’ll be comparing ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ with another short story called ‘The Speckled Band’. The Speckled Band was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in 1892. This already shows that the both stories may be slightly different because they are both written in two different centuries. It is one of the books from the Sherlock Holmes series. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle established a tradition of detective fiction and modern detective fiction tries to continue this tradition. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous and popular detectives in the world. From my own knowledge I already know that Sherlock Holmes is a very famous, intelligent and unique detective. Sherlock homes novels are very famous for the reason they bring out enchanting and realistic characteristics and settings in the stories.
Both Speckled Band and the Lamb to the Slaughter are both similar as they are both murder mysteries. They both deal with difficult cases but while the murder in the Speckled Band is very cunning one as it uses eastern ideas and animals, creating an almost mystical air around the murder as it almost seems impossible to solve. On the other hand Lamb to the slaughter is a very direct and simple mystery which flows through the readers eyes. It has a very sly drift which is based toward the end of the story.
In lamb to the slaughter Mary Maloney’s husband is the victim. We read on to see how the murder was committed, and then it catches out attention to see if she gets away with it, where as in the speckle band, we want the detectives to solve the mystery and inform the reader how it all happened.
From the time where the victim (Mr. Maloneys) comes home, we can see that things are not right. He has been shown to be acting completely strange in everything he does.
‘…he did an unusual thing, he lifted his glass and drained it in at one swallow…’ which shows he either had a bad day at work or there something seriously upsetting him.
The story then slowly swifts with Mr Malone’s couple word answers to Mary Malone’s questions. This shows his motionless trying to speak out about some sort of bad news.
