The story is opened using words such as ‘warm’ and ‘clean’ and the atmosphere seams very homely. “The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight – hers and the one by the empty chair opposite. On the sideboard behind her, two tall glasses, soda water, whisky. Fresh ice cubes in the Thermos Bucket.”
Suspense is introduced when Mr Maloney comes home from work. Mary greets him with ‘Hullo darling!’ and he replies with a simple ‘Hullo’. This makes us wonder if there are any problems between the couple. This intrigues us to read on to find out what the problem is.
When Mary Maloney asks her husband questions he answers them in short and direct answers. “Darling, shall I get your slippers?” he replies “No”. This also indicates that there is some kind of unease between them.
Something else that indicates there may be some kind of unease is he takes a long time to reply to his wife “he didn’t answer”, “Her eyes waited on him for an answer, a smile, a little nod, but he made no sign.”
When Mr Maloney reveals he is planning to leave his wife we can imagine how devastated she would be because she seams to love him very deeply.
Mary Maloney then hits her husband over the head with a frozen leg of lamb and kills him. This is a very interesting use of a weapon because we would not expect it to be used. When Mary Maloney cooks the leg of lamb and feeds it to the police officers is becomes very amusing and seams a very good twist to end the story with.
The Signalman is a pre 20th century text, which is written by Charles Dickens.
The story is about a signalman who sees a ghost like figure warning him about accidents, which are to occur in the near future at the railway.
At the beginning of the story Dickens uses words such as ‘shadowed’ and ‘foreshortened’ to create an eerie atmosphere. He also says ‘the glow of an angry sunset’ the word angry changes the scene hat would have been set by the thought of the sun setting. We would picture a beautiful glowing orange descending into darkness, but the word ‘angry’ makes us feel as though it is very fiery. This contrasts with A Lamb To the Slaughter where it is opened with words such as ‘warm’ and ‘clean’. This also contrasts with the mood, which is set because it makes the scene very homely.
In the beginning of the story, the phrase ‘Halloa! Bellow there’ is used. This quotation indicates that the story is set many years ago because of the language used. Dickens uses words such as ‘violent pulsation’ and ‘oncoming rush’ to emphasize the speed of an oncoming train. This helps build suspense because these sort of words relate with how someone would feel if they were nervous or afraid, for example a ‘violent pulsation’ could be used to describe someone’s heartbeat. This contrasts to A Lamb To The Slaughter where Roald Dahl uses phrases like ‘smiling air’ to imply that the atmosphere is calm where as Charles Dickens is creating a very tense atmosphere.
The Signalman is set outside the rain track whereas A Lamb To The Slaughter is set in Mary Maloney’s house. This makes a big difference in the atmosphere set because Mary Maloney’s home seams like a warm and comfortable place whereas the Railway line seams cold and deserted.
The Characters are very different in the two stories. Mary Maloney is a warm and loving wife who has a nice home and is pregnant whereas the signalman is a hardworking man. We are not told much about his home life. This contrasts to A Lamb to the slaughter where we can see a lot of Mary Maloney’s home life.
I would have expected the Signalman to be more of a murderer than Mary Maloney because we are told so little about him.
Mary Maloney is much more cleaver and quick thinking than the Signalman because she figured out she had to make herself an alibi and did it quickly whereas the signalman couldn’t figure out that the ghost was warning him for his own safety.
