Pain, What is it?

Roald Dahl is a tremendous author with great characterization skills, he can easily describe the character and its personality with short sentences. This type of characterization can be found on his short story "Lamb to the Slaughter", this is a story of a married woman who lives with her husband on a very ordinary life. Mary (the wife) is pregnant with a six month baby, and Patrick (her husband) is a officer. One day Patrick confessed to Mary that he had an affair with another women and that he would leave her so he can be with the one he loves. But later a small spark of anger starts taking over her and she ends up killing her husband with a frozen lamb leg. After she regains consciousness she is more worried about the baby than herself so she chooses to elaborate a plan which will make her appear innocent. She leaves to do grocery shopping and when she comes back she pretends that someone else killed him. She immediately call the cops, and they  arrive but they cannot figure out who did it they were especially concentrated on getting the weapon. As it got darker Mary offered them supper, the lamb leg, and so they accept and end up eating the only evidence they had.

One of the best parts where Roald Dahl uses characterization is when he describes mary thinking about the consequences of her actions

"She began thinking very fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew quite well what the penalty would be. That was fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the child?"

This proves how caring she is, she doesn't care that she will get death penalty but she is more concerned with the well-being of the baby that the only reason she went through all the trouble of creating a plan so she can be proven innocent.

Imagery for Roald Dahl is a little tricky to find, at least in this story. But he did a good job of describing the husbands body once he was hitted with lamb leg

"And when she saw him lying there on the floor with his legs doubled up and one arm twisted back underneath his body."






This is really descriptive, by telling the position of the body its like you can almost picture it, By saying the posture and how his arm is twisted it just seem real like if you are watching the body.

This story leaves a strong message which is that pain can take control over us if we are not strong enough. Mary was so desperately in love with Patrick that losing him was the worse that could happen even worse than death itself. Pain is powerful but when we understand it we can learn to be a better person and transmit our messages to other people for a better future.

New Sun

These chapters have been astonishing, Jonas has matured so much that he will leave his community to comply with a plan that him an the Giver started. Everything started when in the previous lessons Jonas complained and stated that everyone should have access to memories. But what really burst the bubble was the story of Rosemary and the truth about being released. Firstly the whole mystery of the incident 10 years ago that happened to the new receiver, was revealed to Jonas telling that this young female just like Jonas was selected to be the new Receiver of Memories but the Giver loved the girl so much that he didn't wanted to give her painful memories but he had no choice. Unlike Jonas's memories these memories weren't about pain but about loneliness the pain of losing someone you love, childs being take away from their parents. After those memories were passed to Rosemary she changed dramatically, she wasn't the same. After a couple of days Rosemary parted from the Giver and asked to be released, this is why Jonas cannot ask for a release. But what really hurt Jonas was when people meant release it really meant killing. In addition, Jonas's father was doing it and he didn't have a clue he was killing newborns. This gave Jonas the message that no matter what, he has to change his community. This is how the plan between Jonas and the Giver was created, with the goal to change things forever.

During the release of the twins that Jonas's father performed in the morning, there where some commentaries left me thinking about some words that the Giver told to Jonas after they watched the tape of the release.

"You suggested, Jonas, that perhaps she wasn't brave enough? I don't know about bravery: What it is, what it means. I do know that I sat here with horror. Wretched with helplessness. And I listen to Rosemary tell them that she would prefer to inject herself."  (151 Lowry)

The first words of the Giver are the ones that made me realize that Jonas judged Rosemary wrong. What I think happened to Rosemary inside of her head was not fear nor pain, at least not to the degree of killing herself, but what she really felt was resentment towards the community. I think that she saw the community as a lost cause primarily because they force someone to withhold the entire memories of the world the enjoyable and painful ones. At first I can guess that Rosemary felt okay with the selection of Receiver but when she realized she had to take the pain she asked why should I take the entire pain of the world if I have no power in the society? Why should I be the only one to hold all of this knowledge in pain while others live in ignorance happily? She knew that her knowledge had to be shared to the entire community but she could approach to much nor touch the other people as if it may be considered as a disrespect. Now this is pretty much a guess but, since she was allowed to ask anything she could have watched a release and since she had the memories of loss she could have related to what release meant. So maybe by releasing herself she might be able to share the little memories she had. So thats why she asked to release herself because she had the hope that once that the people had the memories they would return to normal. So thats maybe a big hypothesis I have about the truth about Rosemary but it makes sense to me.


Reading these chapters made me get really interested in the book since it holds a lot of mystery and many things were revealed about the reality of the community. Also the fact that Jonas and the Giver will do something to change the entire society made me get really excited and raised my hope of thinking that the community will gain its humanity again because thats the most important thing. I can not wait to get to the next chapters to see how things add up at the end and how things end. Whether it is a happy ending or a sad one or even a open ending that would make things really fun.