Analyzing lamb to the slaughter
1. The story takes place somewhere in the USA on an ordinary Thursday. The duration is around 5 hours. The main characters are Mary Maloney and her husband, Patrick.
The story starts with a woman called Mary Maloney waiting for her husband to come home for work. When he comes home, he tells her that he has found another woman. Mary Maloney then kills her husband with a frozen lamb leg that they were supposed to have for dinner. She is afraid she (and her baby that is soon to be born) might get sentenced to death penalty, so she decides to pretend she didn’t kill her husband for to the police. She places the lamb leg in a pan and turns the heat on. She then goes to the store to buy vegetables to the dinner and when she comes home, she calls the police. She tries as hard as she can to not disclose the truth in any way when she talks to the police. At the end, the police men eat the murder weapon, the lamb leg.
2. Mary Maloney has a smooth skin, soft mouth and her eyes are dark and large.
Patrick has a funny shape of his mouth and never says a word about his tiredness.
3. The central question in the story is Patrick wanting to leave his wife while she is pregnant. Mary obviously cares much about her husband, and she gets crushed after he says these words. She gets so mad she kills her husband with a lamb leg. The other conflict is how Mary is going to get away with her killing Patrick.
4. The story has a quite long introduction where there is not much happening. Then Patrick tells his wife that he has found another woman and a turning point is Mary killing Patrick with a lamb leg. The main body is quite long too. The ending is a climax, the police men eating the murder weapon. The author writes in third person.
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6. The atmosphere in the story is sad in the beginning and tense in the middle and end.
7. The theme is betrayal, jealously and protection for the baby.