Today I am not talking about pollution. I am going to tell you about the similarities and differences of Lamb to the slaughter and Way up to heaven from Roald Dahl 10 Short stories.
The similarities of the two stories is that both have the same theme which is lying and deception. Both is about the wife killing their husband whether directly or indirectly. I will start with a brief summary of Lamb to the slaughter.
Mary Maloney is the wife of Patrick Maloney. Patrick Maloney is caring and takes his wife out every Thursday. He is probably treating Mary well as Mary loves him very much. His wife , Mary is totally in love with her husband and he awaits him every evening for him to come home from work.
She prepares whisky for her husband to drink when he came home. When he returned, Mary enjoyed his company and the presence of him feel almost like a sunbather feels the Sun. When Patrick told Mary that he wanted to leave her, she could not believe it and she was spurned by her husband's decision to use a leg of lamb to kill him.
She used the same amount of care and planing to carry out the murder as she used to take care of the house. She did not even feel regretful or guilty at all. She was emotionless after that.
The brief summary of Way up to heaven is about two people, Mr and Mrs Foster. The live in a old gloomy house in New York and had few visitors. Mrs Foster is a person who dreads being late and gets nervous at the thought of being late.Mr Foster likes to irritate Mrs Foster by trying to delay her from going to somewhere as much as possible and and by keeping her waiting, he seems to enjoy it.
One January morning, Mrs Foster was going to France to visit her daughter and grand children. Mr Foster took his time to come out of the house and tried all sorts of methods to delay Mrs Foster. When they were in the car, Mr Foster suddenly said that he could not find a present for his daughter and went into the house again to find it. Mrs Foster then notices the present was tucked down the side of the car seat.
She then decided to go into the house to inform Mr Foster but when she went in, she heard the noise of the lift not working and was now stuck in the middle of the floors. Upon hearing that , she stops and closed the door. She managed to catch the plane and went to France.
Six months later, she returned to her house and smelled a strange smell. She walked swiftly around the house appearing to be investigating something and the confirmed it. Obviously her husband had died in the lift as he was being trapped in the lift six months ago and the strange smell came from his dead body.
The difference about the story is that Mary Maloney was only tortured by her husband for a few minutes before she killed him with a leg of lamb while Mrs Foster suffered her husband's torture for her whole life with her husband.
In my opinion, I think that Mrs Foster's case of murdering her husband was more cruel in a sense that her husband died a little by little while in Mary Maloney's case, she kill him in less than a few seconds. This means that Mr Foster was left trapped in the lift for at least a few days in the lift without food and water and eventually died.
The similarity on the theme, lying and deception means that Mr Foster lied about the fact that he did not bring the present for his daughter and in LTTS, the part on deception is that the character of Patrick Maloney, Mary Maloney and Mrs Foster changed from the beginning to the ending.
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Your blog has so many funny stories. Interesting
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