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.
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