In Roald Dahl's short story "Lamb to the Slaughter," the prolific writer of children's stories preludes his work in such classics as James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by writing about the violent and irrational world of adults. While he would go on to chronicle child characters who can get along despite the seeming insanity of their elders, this early short story demonstrates that the at times comic absurdity of adults would be a preoccupation of Dahl's.
In "Lamb to the Slaughter," readers encounter the story of the annoying husband of Mary Maloney, who upon coming home from work tells his wife in a detached tone that he is planning to leave her. While at first the husband seems to be the most absurd and uncaring character, Mary soon takes on this honor when she decides to swing a leg of lamb at the back of her husband's head to kill him.(Dahl 1). Her cruelty and poor reasoning are emblematic of the adults in Dahl's children stories.
The story idea came to Dahl from a friend at a time when he himself was struggling with the cruel world of adults, being rejected by several major magazines for publication (Treglown 105). The story reflects a certain morbid attitude about the way grown people treat each other. Dahl's personal experience with the cold ways of the "real world" makes sense as the genesis of the story.
Joyce Carol Oates describes the story as "a revenge tale of comic-book simplicity" (Oates 1). Indeed, Dahl's emphasis on the aggressive revenge-seeking capacities of adults dominates this work and would dominate his future stories. Yet it also is much simpler than the stories of the fantastic triumph of children escaping the vengeful adult world. Eileen Donaldson notes the difference between "Lamb to the Slaughter" and his children's stories. She writes, "In his writing for children, Dahl may create a situation in which the child is a victim of a pa
...