Wider Reading Assignment

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ though is not a typical detective story because the story doesn’t follow a detective, the crime isn’t solved and the crime is shown instead of being shown at the end. The story is told in 3rd person e.g. “Mary Maloney waited for her husband”. It begins with Mary Maloney sewing while waiting for her husband to come home. Mr Malony arrives home, greets his wife and then sits down after a hard days work, like every other day. It starts this way to set the scene, that is a couple who are happy together and looking forward to the birth of their child. This is a happy setting that makes it look like nothing will go wrong. But it gets dramatic, Mr Maloney has some news to tell Mary Maloney which is not told in the story but is presumed by the reader to be bad. After hearing this news Mrs Maloney is hurt, so she goes to the freezer to get the frozen leg of lamb to make dinner when she walks past the living room were Mr Maloney is stood with his back to her. Then Mr Maloney says to her .“For Gods sake don’t make supper for me I’m going out”. Which hurts Mrs Maloney more so she steps forward and strikes the leg of lamb at the top of his head killing him . This is the most dramatic point of the story. Roald Darhl keeps you reading because you want to know if Mrs Maloney gets away with it and how or if she found out by a significant clue. She ends up getting away with the murder because the police do not have any clue that she did it. But the one clue she did it is the murder weapon the leg of lamb that gets ate by the police in the end. Roald Dahl finishes the story of with the police eating the murder weapon and saying .“Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises Probably right under our very noses. What do you think, Jack?”  which the reader knows it is under their noses and so does Mary Maloney who giggles from hearing the police say this.

‘The Speckled Band’ has a difficult language because the sentences and paragraphs are very long which makes it quite difficult to read for some people because in that time that style of writing was simple. Conan Doyle’s vocabulary is different to are because this story was written in the 19th century and words have changed since then. Examples of these king of words used are ‘veil’ a kind of dress worn then but not now, ‘metropolis’ a word that means the a city and he uses upon a lot e.g. “She retorted upon me” retorted is never used much anymore. There are a lot of other words as well. The words used by Conan Doyle are mainly things which were in that day such as veil, dog-kart and blacksmith.

‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ is simpler to read compared to ‘The Speckled Band’ the main reason the sentences and Paragraphs are a lot shorter because the story was written in the 1950’s not in 1890’s like ‘The Speckled Band’. The vocabulary used is different, in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ there is words which were not heard of in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s day like Car, Freezer and phone all objects which weren’t invented. Roald Dalh also doesn’t use words like upon and other words which were in used in the Victorian language. Using modern word gives the reader a clearer understanding of the story because a car is used, like in ‘The Speckled Band’ the reader may have trouble in understanding what a dog-kart is. This proves it is typical of its time. Roald Darhl makes The first sentence simple to read “The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lights alight – hers and the one by the empty chair opposite”. He puts a dash or comma to break up a sentence making it feel shorter but their have been alot of points been made in the short sentence. Not like Conan Doyle who drags his sentences on.

Conan Doyle portrays his main charactors by having another character describe the character like Mrs Helen Stoner describes the bad things Dr Roylett has done and were his background came from. He describes Dr Roylett as ferious, violent temper, immense strength and an uncontrollable anger. He compares and exaggerates his descriptions like “A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles” and “burned yellow with the sun”. These give a good description. These descriptions make the reader think Dr Roylett is a really bad person, treats people with no manners and he is ugly. The reader imagines him as a big, ugly, angry man and a muscular man because he threw a blacksmith. The characters all appear at the same location that is Holmes waiting room at the beginning of the story. The characters are associated at all kind of places like Sherlok Holmes and Dr Watson are associated at there home were they start the story, Dr Roylett is associated with Calcutta because that is were he is from, Mrs Helen Stoner is associated with Stoke Moran. They are associated to be they appear to be from in the story. The characters represent good or evil by what is told about them e.g. Holmes solves crimes so he is good.

Roald Darhl does not describe his character as much as Conan Doyle. He describes Mary Malony shortly after the beginning but only describe small things such as eye colour, not her shape or how she looks. That is about the only person he describes, he doesn’t describe Mr Maloney because he dies. He describes Mary as caring and helpful because she puts her husbands coat away and gets him a drink. He does this to make the reader think she would not do such a murder. He also tells the reader what she is thinking so the reader doesn’t think she is guilty. There is no stereotype made on Mary because she is described as the type who would murder. Mary Malony is good at the beginning but turns bad when she kills Mr Malony. Were sympathetic to Mrs Maloney because she is pertrayed as a good person at the beginning but is hurt by her husband’s news which turns Mrs Maloney bad. These characters are quite realistic like ‘The Speckled Band’ there is a detective who can solve about any crime which is quite strange because know one is possible in solving about every crime, there is no one like that and they all have normal life’s.