How Drastic Change Leads to Drastic Measures free essay sample

Mykaila Engish2Honors Don’t Go Changing: An Analysis on Change in the Short Story â€Å"Lamb to the Slaughter† When you are young, there is always one child in school who cheats in a game, or breaks the rules, and has to go to time-out because of it. Even full-gown adults break laws and consequently go to jail. Whenever the social or official rules in a society are broken, there are consequences. Rules are there for a reason; they provide a life of stability and structure.In Roald Dahl’s short story â€Å"Lamb to the Slaughter†, Patrick, with an expecting wife, broke the social code of the time era by telling his wife bad news that drastically altered her structured lifestyle. Feeling lost and scared, she immediately resorts to what she thinks is best, and kills her husband with a leg of lamb. Dahl indicates that drastic changes can lead to drastic outcomes; he conveys this through direct characterization, irony, and symbolism. We will write a custom essay sample on How Drastic Change Leads to Drastic Measures or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Dahl directly describes Mary Maloney as the pregnant wife who undergoes most of the severe changes in the story.These changes all end up having pretty extreme outcomes. For example, when her husband randomly informs her of what we infer to be a break up in their relationship, that shatters her perfectly ordered life and she became a murderer. This is the main change in the story and it also has the most dramatic outcome. Confused, Mary could no longer rely on a perfect life for stability, and she went back to her primitive nature and killed the reason behind all of the confusion. Another drastic change is Mary’s personality after she actually murders her husband. This also portrays situational irony because Mary begins to manipulate those around her, even police officers, when just hours before she seemed like an innocent doting woman. Dahl uses symbolism to indicate the relationships between a lot of physical and mental changes. For instance, Mary obtained the mindset of a murderer as soon as she got the news from Patrick. As their physical relationship started to have problems, so did Mary. Moments after Mary received the shocking news, in her mind, â€Å"Everything was automatic† (319) and â€Å"She couldn’t feel anything at all† (319).The author is trying to demonstrate to the reader that Mary’s marriage and Mary’s mental state broke down at the same time. Another example of this is when the things that happen in the house parallel what happens in Mary’s mind. Before the breaking news and the murder, Dahl describes the house using words like â€Å"warm† (317), â€Å"clean† (317), â€Å"empty† (317), and â€Å"tranquil† (317). After the terrible news and the murder, Dahl uses specific word choice to emphasize how stuffy Mary’s mind becomes by describing how filled the house becomes.He frequently used phrases such as â€Å"there were other policemen in the garden† (323), â€Å"all around the house† (323), â€Å"searching the house† (322), and â€Å"searching the rooms† (322). What the author is doing here is dramatizing the fact that when Mary’s life was put together and in order, the house was tidy, neat, and quiet. As soon as order was disrupted, her mental peace was disturbed, and likewise, her house was cluttered with policemen, doctors, detectives, and photographers. Dahl clearly conveys the similarities between the psychological states and the substantial states of the things in the story.