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“Lamb to the Slaughter”
Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews | Criticism and Analysis | Teacher Ideas
Information
- September 1953 issue of Harper’s Magazine
- 13 Ways to Kill a Man
- 5 Bestsellers Including Over 40 Tales of the Unexpected
- A Roald Dahl Selection: Nine Short Stories
- Completely Unexpected Tales
- Crime a la Carte
- Demonic Dangerous & Deadly
- Dumped: An Anthology
- Great British Mystery Stories of the Twentieth Century
- Great Murder Mysteries
- Great Short Stories of the English Speaking World
- International Treasury of Mystery and Suspense
- Lamb to the Slaughter and Other Stories
- Murder British Style
- Murder on the Menu
- Selected Stories of Roald Dahl
- Skin and Other Stories
- Someone Like You
- Tales of the Unexpected
- Tales of the Unexpected (Volume 1)
- The Best of Roald Dahl
- The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl
- The Complete Short Stories: Volume One
- The Edgar Winners: 33rd Annual Anthology of the Mystery Writers of America
- The Mystery Hall of Fame
- The Roald Dahl Omnibus
- Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (#137) - April 1955
- Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (Australia – #102) - December 1955
- Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (UK – #27) - April 1955
- Harper’s Magazine (1953-09) - September 1953
- The Honeys (play), 1955, Longacre Theater, Broadway
- “De Fijnproever & Lam Ter Slachtbank” read by Hans Keller
- “Lamb to the Slaughter” read by Juliet Stevenson
- Someone Like You read by Julian Rhind-Tutt, Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, Derek Jacobi, Richard Griffiths, Willl Self, Jessica Hynes, Juliet Stevenson, Adrian Scarborough, Richard E. Grant
- Tales of the Unexpected read by Geoffrey Palmer, Joanna David, Tom Hollander, Patricia Routledge, and Joanna Lumley
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1958)
- Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
Plot Description
This is probably the most well-known of all Dahl’s short stories, simply because (in my opinion) it’s so simple. There isn’t a single wasted word in it. It’s gripping, shocking, and yet the story proceeds in such a rational manner that the reader’s suspension of disbelief is never broken. We are with Mary Maloney from the first sentence of the story, and only at the end do we realize that we never really knew her at all.
Spoiler warning! Mary Maloney is a devoted wife and expectant mother. She waits happily each night for the arrival of her husband Patrick, home from work at the police station. On this particular night, though, she can tell something is wrong. In disbelief, she listens as Patrick tells her that he is leaving her for another woman. [Actually Dahl never really says this; the details are left up to the reader’s imagination.] Dazed, she goes into the kitchen to prepare their supper and pulls a large frozen leg of lamb from the deep freeze. Still numb, she carries it into the living room and without warning bashes her husband over the head with it. As she looks at Patrick lying dead on the floor, she slowly begins to come back to her senses. Immediately she realizes the ramifications of what she has done. Not wanting her unborn child to suffer as a result of her crime, she begins planning her alibi. She places the leg of lamb in a pan in the oven and goes down to the corner grocery to get some food for “Patrick’s dinner” (making sure the grocer sees her normal and cheerful state of mind). She returns home and screams when she finds Patrick lying on the floor. She calls the police and informs them that she found her husband lying dead on the floor. Within hours swarms of officers are searching the house and conducting an investigation. Mary’s story of coming home from the grocer and finding him is corroborated as she had planned. While the police are searching fruitlessly into the night for the murder weapon, Mary offers them some lamb that she had prepared for dinner. They are happy to oblige. While they lounge in the kitchen and discuss the case (their mouths “sloppy” with meat), Mary Maloney sits in the living room and giggles softly to herself.
- “The Art of Vengeance” by Joyce Carol Oates ( The New York Review of Books )
- “Mister Macabre” by Edwin M. Yoder ( The Weekly Standard )
Criticism and Analysis
- Essay by J.C. Bernthan published in FEAST
Teacher Ideas
- Includes a reading jigsaw, ranking features of the perfect murder, and vocabulary matching task
- A R.A.F.T. Writing Prompt involving identification of important quotes from the story and then writing a persuasive essay in the form of a closing argument from a defense attorney
- Activities and discussion prompts involving a comparison of Edward Hopper's paintings and Dahl's writing (from The New York Times)
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Lamb to the Slaughter
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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Lamb to the Slaughter: Introduction
Lamb to the slaughter: plot summary, lamb to the slaughter: detailed summary & analysis, lamb to the slaughter: themes, lamb to the slaughter: quotes, lamb to the slaughter: characters, lamb to the slaughter: symbols, lamb to the slaughter: theme wheel, brief biography of roald dahl.
Historical Context of Lamb to the Slaughter
Other books related to lamb to the slaughter.
- Full Title: Lamb to the Slaughter
- When Published: 1953
- Literary Period: Modernism
- Genre: Short story; black comedy
- Setting: Late 1940s or 1950s, in the Maloney house and a nearby grocery store
- Climax: Mary kills her husband
- Antagonist: Patrick Maloney
- Point of View: Third-person limited
Extra Credit for Lamb to the Slaughter
Inspiration. “Lamb to the Slaughter” was supposedly written by Dahl after his friend Ian Fleming (spy novelist and former intelligence officer) suggested he write a story about a woman who murders her husband with frozen mutton that she serves to the detectives investigating her husband’s case.
Small screen version. The story was adapted into a television script written by Dahl and presented by Alfred Hitchcock. It aired in 1958, five years after the story was originally published.
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Home / Essay Samples / Literature / Lamb to The Slaughter / A Closer Look at “Lamb To The Slaughter”: Literary Analysis
A Closer Look at "Lamb To The Slaughter": Literary Analysis
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- Topic: Lamb to The Slaughter , Literature Review
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