Lamb to the slaughter lesson 4 + irony

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 4

Lamb to the Slaughter

Gender and Marriage

What life was like for women in the 50s

Historically, women have been often consigned to the private sphere of domestic life, as they were deemed by men to be intellectually and emotionally unfit for the public sphere outside of family and home life. Men, on the other hand, were able to move through both spheres, enjoying the comforts of domestic life provided by wives and mothers while interacting with the political and economic institutions of the public arena.

ROLE REVERSALS

Role reversal in the story

Patrick Maloney’s role reversals are two-fold. First, in contrast to the story’s early account of Mary’s infatuation with his masculinity and power, Patrick is now “feminized” as the power in his marriage shifts to his wife when she attacks him. Second, his death then undermines his role as a detective.

Whereas previously his duties as a detective would have entailed preventing the crime in the first place or bringing the culprit to justice, now he unable to do so as he must fulfill the role of murder victim.

Food and Consumption

Who is eating who/what?

The weaponization of food is both literal and metaphorical, so is the motif of consumption. Mary, a happy housewife, is consumed with her marriage and her husband’s masculinity, and thus her role within a male-dominated culture.  Her entire life revolves around her husband. 

Who is eating who/what?

Patrick is consumed with his work. He is always tired because of his work as a detective, he values his job more than he does his wife. After Patrick’s death, this consumption becomes literal and possibly cannibalistic for the detectives, who eat the murder weapon. As the detectives’ “thick and sloppy” mouths wolf down the leg of lamb, the men fail to realize that it had been bashed into Patrick’s skull and may even contain his blood. Whereas Patrick Maloney was once consumed with his work, now he is consumed by his work. The men’s suspicion that the weapon is “right under our very noses,”  is another example of the story's ironic black humor.

Irony

When something quite the opposite happens of what you'd expect. This can be rather funny, or rather sad.

Lamb to the slaughter 

In what whay is the title ironic

The term "lamb to the slaughter" is usually used figuratively rather than literally. As a figure of speech, it means an innocent person who is being set up as a sacrifice or dupe without realizing what is going on.

Mary, unexpectedly, is not the lamb to the slaughter: the situation works out in the opposite way. Sweet Mary slaughters her husband. And in a use of verbal irony, she literally uses a lamb (leg of lamb) to slaughter him. The phrase "lamb to the slaughter" is literal, not figurative, because she whacks her husband on the head with a frozen leg of lamb and kills him.

The Lamb/Leg of Lamb

The Lamb

Traditionally the lamb is portrayed as a gentle submissive creature, associated with ritual or religious sacrifice (especially in Judeo-Christian tradition).

In this story, the figure of the lamb takes on two roles: as both avictim and a source of violence or sacrifice. Both Mary and her husband Patrick take on the roles of figurative lambs as they sacrifice each other. 

The Lamb

However, while Patrick sacrifices Mary’s role as his wife by leaving the marriage, Mary sacrifices Patrick’s life, killing him with a frozen leg of lamb. 

The Lamb

The transformation of the lamb from an object of sacrifice to a tool of violence, signals Mary’s transformation from submissive housewife to violent killer, and resonates in the double meaning and black humor of the story’s title:

whereas the Maloneys are both lambs to be slaughtered figuratively or literally, the lamb, or rather the frozen leg of lamb, is also used as an instrument of slaughter. 

The Lamb

Once the policemen are called to investigate

Patrick’s murder, then, the lamb comes to represent both a

sacrifice for the detectives (as food) and a weapon against them (as that sacrifice as food entails the destruction of evidence).