Also, ‘Lamb to the slaughter is left unsolved, whereas, ‘The Speckled Band’ is solved. In ‘The Speckled Band’ the detective is very smart. He’s always alert and notes everything around him. Finally, he gets some clues, and puts two and two together and reveals the criminal to the reader. He tells the reader how he solved the mystery at the very end to create suspense and to keep the reader interested.
In ‘Lamb to the slaughter’, Mary Maloney outsmarts the police. The detectives try to find the weapon, which is in the oven being cooked. However, the police don’t know this. The fingerprints are removed from the leg of lamb, when it is cooked. Finding no proof, the detectives could not find the murderer and closed the case.
The similar thing in the plot is that a family member kills the victim. There are detectives in both stories. However, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (The Speckled Band) is a private detective and ‘Jack Noonan and O’Malley (Lamb to the slaughter) are policemen.
The structure varies from both stories. ‘The Speckled Band’ has a typical murder mystery structure, compared to the unconventional structure in ‘Lamb to the slaughter’.
‘The Speckled Band’ immediately starts as a murder mystery when Watson, mentions a secret and a death. There are more clues given in ‘The Speckled Band’ than in ‘Lamb to the slaughter’.
‘Lamb to the slaughter’ begins with a romance like atmosphere. However, later when a murder occurs it changes to a murder mystery.
Different language is used in both stories. ‘The Speckled Band’ is in first person narrative and ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ is in third person narrative. ‘The Speckled Band’ is narrated as “ I had no keener pleasure……….” And “ I rapidly threw on my clothes”.
‘The Speckled Band uses long and hard sentences. The language is very formal and polite and reflects good manners, like, “My dear fellow” and “Good morning, Madam”, whereas we would now say, ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Madam’. This is the type of language that would have been typical over one hundred years ago.
Language in ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ is the complete opposite to the language in ‘The Speckled Band’. It uses colloquial, relaxed and casual language like, ‘Hullo’ instead of ‘Hello’. The sentences are also short and casual, ‘Be doing her a favour’. This is much more like the way people would speak today.
The murderers in the stories have different characters. Dr. Roylott is considered mad whereas Mary is perfectly normal. Dr. Roylott is considered a prime suspect in ‘The Speckled Band’ whereas in ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ is considered a sweet, innocent housewife. The men in the Roylott family usually inherited a violent temper. At that time it was thought that people living in the tropics for too long, could become mad as the heat got to their brains. Dr. Roylott had lived in a tropical country, India. It was considered that living in the tropics had made his temper worse. That’s why he’s considered a prime suspect because of his temper. Instead of making friends with neighbours, he had fights with them and the whole village was petrified of him. No one liked him.
The similarity here is that both are very clever indeed. However, the difference is that Dr. Roylott was clever at the very start; meanwhile, Mary Maloney becomes smart after committing the murder. She tries to act normal and even practices her speech that she will say to the shopkeeper, Sam, “Hullo, Sam. I want some potatoes please” in front of a mirror.
The victims both die by a family member but the motives are different. In ‘ The Speckled Band’ the murder is committed for money. However, in ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ the murder is committed because Mary does not want her husband to leave her.
In ‘The Speckled Band’ the intended victim, Helena senses something wrong and goes to the detective. When Helena goes to Sherlock Holmes, he and his assistant are very surprised because in those days women were hardly allowed to get out of the house without their husbands. They were even more surprised when they discovered that she had actually travelled using fare in a train. At that time, women didn’t have any money. Before marrying their father’s had the money. After marriage their husbands had the money and Helen had money on her, which was very unusual.
In ‘Lamb to the slaughter, the victim, Patrick, doesn’t sense a thing before he’s murdered.
In conclusion, both stories are very good. However, my recommendation would be ‘The Speckled Band’ because there’s more suspense because we discover who the murderer is at the end, so it keeps us to read on. However, in ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ we already know the criminal. By that I wonder why it’s in the genre ‘Murder Mystery’ since there is no mystery. Therefore, ‘The Speckled band’ is a better choice.
Varinder Singh Plaha 10T Comparison essay
English
Ms. White
