One thing I mentioned on Monday was about how some of the subject matter of Roald Dahl’s work is a little dark. Even in the children’s books, he didn’t shy away from showing that not everything in the world is sunshine and rainbows.
The other giants in the BFG literally eat children. Miss Trunchbull threw a child over a fence by her hair. The Grand High Witch sings an entire son about how her poison would result in hundreds of children being turned into mice, being killed by mouse traps and the teachers sweeping them up.
A Product of Our Time
My generation is no stranger to this kind of darkness. Bambi, the Lion King, Watership Down, anyone? Parents may want to shelter their children from this kind of thing, but it’s important to remember that in real life, horrible things happen all the time. People die, disasters happen, cruelty exists in our world.
I will never forget coming home from school on September the 11th, 2001 to find my dad watching the news on TV. Seeing those towers collapse, watching the rising death toll as rescue efforts continued. Hard to believe that was almost 22 years ago now.
The Covid pandemic has been a huge collective trauma for all of us. Just last week there were massive wildfires causing horrific destruction in Hawaii. Floods, earthquakes, nuclear disasters like in Fukushima. War. Murders, sexual assaults, women and children going missing from Native American communities. Political unrest.
Dark Humour
Some people will find humour amid the darkness in our lives, others will be highly offended by it. Dark humour is a coping mechanism though, and it can be a way for some people to self-regulate their emotions to cope when things are stressful or upsetting. I have a very dark sense of humour, and many of my former colleagues in veterinary medicine do too. When you work in such a stressful, demanding and emotionally charged environment, a little dark humour can make it easier to cope.
That brings me to the particular short story I want to talk about today. This comes from a compilation of Roald Dahls short stories called ‘Tales of the Unexpected Volume 1.’ I have had this book for years, and I first read the story in English class in high school. It’s called ‘Lamb to the Slaughter.’
Lamb to the Slaughter
I’ll summarise the story briefly, but you can read it here. A housewife is preparing for her husbands arrival home from work. It is established early on that her husband is a senior policeman and that she is pregnant. He is very dismissive of her and he tells her something. It is not outright stated what he says but it is implied that he plans to leave her.
She decides to prepare the evening meal, despite his protests, and fetches a leg of lamb from the freezer. He tells her again not to make supper for him and she swings the frozen leg of lamb at the back of his head, killing him. She puts the meat in the oven, tidies up her appearance and goes to the grocery shop to purchase vegetables and a dessert. She returns home to find him dead, and calls the police. They investigate and ask her questions, even going to the grocery shop to ask the shopkeeper.
The detectives inform her that her husband was killed by a large blunt object, almost certainly made of steel. They search for the weapon but find nothing. One of the detectives notices the meat still in the oven. She persuades them to eat the meal, all the while discussing the weapon and how it must still be here somewhere. Hearing this from the other room, she begins to giggle.
My Thoughts
I love this story. It is darkly funny, amusing that she manages to get the police officers to help her dispose of the evidence. Throughout the story, we get to see her thoughts as she deals with the events of the story. She goes into autopilot, after learning that her husband was planning to leave her while she was pregnant. After she kills him, she becomes very cold and calculating, planning everything just right to give herself an alibi.
When the police come and investigate, they are kind to her and she seems to be banking on them not suspecting a woman such as her to be capable of striking a killing blow. Her alibi checked out, so they think it unlikely to be her.
The ending is left vague, on purpose, to my mind. It ends with one of the officers stating ‘”Probably right under our very noses. What do you think, Jack?” And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.’
So what happened next? Did they hear her? Did they realise she could have done it with the frozen leg of lamb? That she had talked them into disposing of the murder weapon for her? That’s for the reader to decide. Was she justified in what she did?
You could argue she was. She clearly loved him, and was very much blindsided by what he told her. We don’t find out why he was leaving her, whether he was having an affair or there was another reason. When she returns home from the shop, she becomes genuinely upset, her tears are real and that makes her innocence more believable to the police. Yet, by the end, she is laughing.
Conclusion
That about covers this short story. I’m not sure what it says about me as a person, but it demonstrates how effective well written short stories can be. I am far from the only person to be entertained by these darker stories either. Horror is a very popular genre in books, movies and video games. True crime is also incredibly popular. We shouldn’t completely shy away from these dark topics. What are your thoughts?
On Friday, we’ll be digging into a controversial topic about Roald Dahl’s work from earlier this year. In the meantime, I’ve got plenty of other content on the blog to keep you going, and you can find me on my social media channels as well. Don’t forget to subscribe to get an email when each new blog post goes live. Until next time!
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