The Speckled Band and Lamb to the Slaughter comparison

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Wide reading assignment:

Comparison between: “The Speckled Band” and “Lamb to the Slaughter”

In this assignment, I am going to compare the two murder mystery stories: “Lamb to the Slaughter’, written in 1954 by Roald Dahl, and ’The Speckled Band’, written in 1892 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Although both books are from the same genre, they have many differences. I will comment on these differences, and any similarities between the stories, and then come to conclusions based upon the comments I make.

The main thing to remember when comparing the two books is the fact that they were written at different times. This means that the language used, and the way in which this language is used, will be different in each book. For example, we see that in ‘The Speckled Band’, that the sentences are generally much longer than the modern day sentences, used in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’. For example, we see that Dr. Watson says “It is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I have reasons to know there are widespread rumours to the death of Dr Grimesby Roylott which tend to make the matter even more terrible than the truth”. This sentence is extremely long, which is made worse by the fact that there is only one comma in it, meaning that we can’t pause for breath when we say it. This shows us that

The characters in the stories are also very different, especially when it comes to dealing with the women, who bring about the cases that they have to solve. Sherlock Holmes was always extremely polite in ‘The Speckled Band’, to both Watson and Maloney. For example, Holmes says: “I shall offer you a cup of hot coffee, for I observe that you are shivering” when the detective first meets his client, Helen Stoner. This shows that he is concerned for his client, which in turn shows that he is particularly courteous to the people who need him to solve their mysteries. He also uses the word ‘pray’ often, which means please, showing that he has good manners in general.

However, Jack Noonan from ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ doesn’t seem to be quite so caring and polite, when dealing with Mary Maloney (his client). In the respect of comforting her, he did seem sympathetic, as he offered to let her live at his home while she recovered from her grieving. However, the fact that: “the car came very quickly,” probably shows that he was more concerned about Patrick than Mary, as Patrick was Noonan’s colleague. This also suggests that Dahl wanted to be vague when writing this book, as he didn’t give a reason as to why Noonan wanted to drive to their home quickly; whether Noonan was concerned for Patrick, or whether he was concerned about Patrick and Mary.

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Because Dahl used vagueness in the book, he can control how much information we get from what the characters are thinking. For example, when Noonan: ‘turned and whispered something to the other detective,’ Dahl doesn’t tell us what was Noonan said. What made this more intriguing, was that another detective: ‘immediately ran outside into the street’. However, because we don’t actually know what was said, we don’t fully know what is happening at that time, meaning that we don’t know whether Noonan suspects Maloney for the murder she committed. This in turn makes us wonder if there is something ...

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