Short+Stories+Lamb+2+the+Slaughter+(Plot+Summary)

Lamb to the Slaughter
The story "Lamb to the Slaughter," is about a wife (Mary Maloney) who kills her husband (Patrick Maloney) and gets away with it. The story starts out with Mary Maloney sitting quietly at home, waiting for her husband to come home from work. Patrick Maloney comes home and after refusing to go out for dinner states that he's going to leave her. She is pregnant and becomes shocked, trying to deny his words in her mind. She walks downstairs to the basement and takes a large leg of lamb from the freezer, and once upstairs hits him in the back of the head with it. Patrick Maloney dies instantly and Mrs. Maloney realizes what she had done. She calms down and practices in front of the mirror to appear like herself, when she goes down to talk to the grocery boy to buy vegetables for 'dinner'. She acts perfectly and the grocery boy suspects nothing, once home she acts naturally when seeing her husbands dead body, by freaking out and calling the police. The police are unable to find any evidence toward the killer and after one of the police men find the leg of lamb in the oven cooking inform Mrs. Maloney and she asks them to eat it. They eat the murder weapon and Mrs. Maloney is last heard giggling in the living room while the police unknowingly got rid of the evidence.

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 * Lamb To the Slaughter Characters**


 * The Wife (Mary Maloney):** Mary is pregnant when her husband decides to leave her, she is shocked and becomes angry. She goes to the freezer and takes out a frozen leg of lamb. She comes up behind him and hits him over the head with it. It kills him and then she tries to cover up for it. Then she puts the lamb in the oven and goes to the grocery store and acts totally normal. When she gets back home she finds her husband dead on the floor and calls the police. The police look around the house for the weapon. Mary begged the police officers to eat dinner and then she serves them the lamb which was what she used to kill her husband, so the evidence is now gone.


 * The Husband : ** Patrick is a hard-working police officer. He finally builds up the guts to tell his wife, while she is pregnant, that he is leaving her. Because of this, his wife goes physco and kills him with a leg of lamb. He then dies and falls on the floor where his wife leaves him while she builds up an alibi to cover up what really happened.


 * Sam : **Sam is the grocery worker who after killing Patrick, Mary goes to the grocery store and talks to him about how she is making a meal for her husband, Sam tells the police officer after the murder than she was acting quite normal.

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 * Police Officer : The Sergeant Noonan is there to investigate the murder. Mary begs him and other police officers to stay and eat dinner which is the lamb, the murder weapon.

**SYMBOLS/THEMES:** In the book the Lamb to the Slaughter, one of the symbols is the leg of lamb. The leg of lamb is a symbol for death. The wife tried to make her husband a nice loving meal, but ends up killing him with the leg of frozen meat.( **Please revise, the wording is strange, but i don't know what to change it into.) **

Quotes
"Please she begged. Please eat it. Personally I couldn't touch a thing, certainly not what's been in this house when he was here. But it's all right for you. It would be a favour to me if you'd eat it up. Then you can go on with your work afterwards." pg 8 Mrs. Maloney wants the police to eat the lamb. Then once they eat it there would be no evidence. The favour that she asked for is not for the food to be eaten but to get rid of the evidence. When they go on with their work after eating they won't be able to find anything.