Lamb to the slaughter

Tom Jackman

Lamb to the slaughter was written by Roald Dahl in 1950. The short story has only a few characters but the most important character is Mary Maloney. Mary is a pregnant housewife who is attached very strongly to her husband, she often makes dinner for him and feeds his every needs. Her husband is a hard-working policeman who comes home one night in a bad mood. She hangs his coat up for him and makes him a drink showing that she is glad he is home and is happy to be with him this is also shown by “She loved to luxuriate in the presents of this man, and to feel almost like a sunbather and feel the sun. She loved him for the way he sat loosely in his chair, for the way he came in the door, or moved slowly across the room with long strides. She loved the intent, far look in his eyes when they rested on her, the funny shape of the mouth, and especially the way he remained silent about his tiredness”.

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The story escalates with the audience led to believe that Mr. Malone is leaving his wife and it leaves Mary shocked and extremely upset. The next part of the story shows Mary in a completely different context. After she kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb she immediately starts creating her alibi. She practices talking to the shopkeeper, to get her voice the right level and to simply act is nothing had happened, once she returns from the shop she begins her act as if she had just found her husband dead, she calls the police and they come round. By this time the murder weapon is already being cooked and after a search of the house Mary offers the leg of lamb to the police to eat. This shows the reader that Mary is a very deceitful, evil and has quite the same qualities as a criminal mastermind.

The sniper

The sniper is a short story by Liam O’Conner. It’s based around the streets of Dublin in the war in the middle of the century. The story’s main character is the actual sniper who is throughout the beginning of the story positioned on the top of a building. The background has the sounds of the ongoing civil war the sniper is described as someone that is used to death and killing, he takes unnecessary risks of smoking in the danger zone and therefore giving his position away. He also an obvious elite marksmen as he takes out the turret master and an informant in two single shots however forgetting of the opposing sniper across the street he gets hit and immediately starts planning how to take that sniper out. It also shows that he is a quick thinker and that he doesn’t get distracted very easily. After killing the other sniper he makes his way down to the street and wants to see who the sniper was that he killed, he doges a burst machinegun fire effortless and lays by the other sniper, after seeing its his brother the story stops. This shows that the sniper wasn’t thinking of the other sniper necessarily as a person but just as a target. You don’t know exactly how the sniper would feel after killing his bother because there is no past information on their relationship to show. This makes the character interesting because he doesn’t even know who he is fighting against, most wars have a defining divide and people know exactly who the enemies are.

Vendetta

Vendetta is a story set in Bonifacio, Corsica and is set on the story that Antoine Saverini was stabbed by Nicholas Ravolati and fled to Sardinia. The mother of Antoine is so upset of her sons passing that she vows revenge against her son’s killer. The mother is almost described as obsessive over her son’s death and begins a sick and twisted way of acting out the revenge on Nicholas. She trains her sons dog to attack a dummy after starving it for two days, she then would reward the dog with a piece of meat that the dog could smell. She became fixated on killing the murderer and could think of nothing else. When she went to carry out the killing she planned it so that she would be in disguise and look like a beggar. Mary is described as a very cruel and evil women obsessed with her version of justice. When, at the end of the story the writers put “That night she slept well” it shows that she thinks everything is as it should be and that there is a balance or vengeance once again.