Compare and contrast The Monkey's Paw, Lamb to the slaughter and Lost Hearts

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Compare and contrast The Monkey’s Paw, Lamb to the slaughter and Lost Hearts

During the last three months we have been studying three short stories, The Monkey’s Paw by W.W.Jacobs. Lamb to the slaughter by Rould Dohl and Lost Hearts by M.R.James. The three stories have some different themes but are similar in many ways.  The themes of, The Monkey’s Paw, are greediness, guilt and fate.  The themes of Lamb to the slaughter are love anger and fate. The themes of Lost Hearts are murder mystery and fate.

 
The story
The Monkey’s Paw.  Is about a family that gains three wishes that would be granted by the monkey’s paw.  The monkey’s paw had a spell put on it by an “old Fakir.”  The family becomes too greedy, even though the Sergeant major warned them to “wish for something sensible.”  The family ignores the Sergeant and wishes for money but the wish has a huge consequence, the consequence was the loss of their own son.

Lamb to the slaughter, is about a very dominating husband and a 1930’s stereotypical wife.  One day after she had been waiting for him to return home from work, like she always did, he was acted  really strange, and “he did an unusual thing.”   He tells his wife that he is leaving him and has found someone else.  His wife is shocked and takes action and stands up for her self.  She decides to kill him by hitting him with a “big frozen leg of lamb.”

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The story Lost Hearts is about a young boy who is alone in the world, “left an orphan.”  His cousin offers to look after him and he goes to stay with him at his mansion, “Aswarby Hall.”  His cousin, “Mr. Abney,” is a strange man, he “all who knew anything of Mr. Abney looked upon him as a some what austere recluse.” His intensions for, “Stephen,” coming to, “Aswarby hall,” are to kill him.

All the stories have the similarity of death or dying.  All the stories have a theme of fate, and that life is guided.  The ...

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