Monday, November 28, 2005

Lamb To Slaughter

This is probably the most well–known of all Dahl's short stories, simply because (in my opinion) it's so simple. There isn't a single wasted word in it. It's gripping, shocking, and yet the story proceeds in such a rational manner that the reader's suspension of disbelief is never broken. We are with Mary Maloney from the first sentence of the story, and only at the end do we realize that we never really knew her at all. Initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, ‘‘Lamb to the Slaughter’’ eventually appeared in Collier’s in 1953, after Knopf published its first collection of Dahl’s short stories and established his American reputation. Dahl had been making headway as a professional writer with a spate of tales that, like ‘‘Lamb to the Slaughter,’’ reflect aspects of human perversity, cruelty, and violence. ‘‘Lamb to the Slaughter’’ opens with Mary Maloney, the pregnant, doting wife of a policeman waiting for her husband to come home from work. When he does so, he makes an abrupt but unspecified statement to Mary, the upshot of which is that he intends to leave her. Her connubial complacency shattered by this revelation, Mary crushes her husband’s skull with a frozen leg of lamb and then arranges an alibi. The laconic suddenness of the events, as Dahl tells them, creates an experience of shock for the reader, an effect which no doubt accounts for the popularity of this frequently anthologized and reprinted story.
"Mary Maloney is a devoted wife and expectant mother. She waits happily each night for the arrival of her husband Patrick, home from work at the police station. On this particular night, though, she can tell something is wrong. In disbelief, she listens as Patrick tells her that he is leaving her for another woman. [Actually Dahl never really says this; the details are left up to the reader's imagination.] Dazed, she goes into the kitchen to prepare their supper and pulls a large frozen leg of lamb from the deep freeze. Still numb, she carries it into the living room and without warning bashes her husband over the head with it. As she looks at Patrick lying dead on the floor, she slowly begins to come back to her senses. Immediately she realizes the ramifications of what she has done. Not wanting her unborn child to suffer as a result of her crime, she begins planning her alibi. She places the leg of lamb in a pan in the oven and goes down to the corner grocery to get some food for "Patrick's dinner" (making sure the grocer sees her normal and cheerful state of mind). She returns home and screams when she finds Patrick lying on the floor. She calls the police and informs them that she found her husband lying dead on the floor. Within hours swarms of officers are searching the house and conducting an investigation. Mary's story of coming home from the grocer and finding him is corroborated as she had planned. While the police are searching fruitlessly into the night for the murder weapon, Mary offers them some lamb that she had prepared for dinner. They are happy to oblige. While they lounge in the kitchen and discuss the case (their mouths "sloppy" with meat), Mary Maloney sits in the living room and giggles softly to herself. "
Dahl, who is also the author of popular children’s’ fiction, appears here as an adult student of adult evil, as a cynically detached narrator, and as an advocate of a grisly form of black comedy. Yet ‘‘Lamb to the Slaughter’’ prefigures the grotesqueness in even his work for children: in both James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ‘‘bad’’ children meet with bizarre and horrific but appropriate fates.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Feline Fatale

giggle giggle...i mean could i have thought of a better title.
the giggle aint gonna last long coz i can see myself taking yet another entrance exam after 3 years of lethargy at BITS. Well..apart from the usual stuff college has imbibed in me, i have to mention the amount of laziness that has creeped into my lifestyle. Procrastination, thanks to my sun-sign has been my bosom buddy, but many thanks to being a 'bitsian' it has been nurtured up well within me.
Am leading you down all the wrong roads. Purpose of the current blog to actually curse myself for not having given the exam much attention previously, and now resorting to last minute preps. I know all in vain but when am done i want to walk out happy, for having done well. Too much to ask for, but then again..am a dreamer u see!
I havnt called God in a long time now, and i dont think my ego will ever permit me to do that. Sope..i rely on Serendipity this time. Fortunate Accident..thats exactly what i am looking for right now...

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

.......

Words often fail me when am thinking hard on a title for my next blog. As in i see things around me, happening when they are destined to happen..things which usually leave a mark, instigate me to blog on the same, but then when the cursor is placed alongside Title: i go blank, even to the point that i forget what i wanted to blog about and often withdraw myself to not publishing the post.
Same is the case with replying to the comments i often receive. In a way, am thankful, that my journal gets read by a handful of people who would often fail to understand what i had wanted to convey..and somehow post a comment not on the expression lying underneath the blog, but on what is explained superficially. i might sound abstract here (nothing new there) , and i welcome no offences here. it is just that i have never replied to comments hence, because i fail to understand the purpose of the comment. and most often the comment is a link to another blog, which would want it to be read and expect a comment from me again..well...we are getting confused here. aint we??
one may ask, then why put up the comments link to your blog, but then am i too not human? apart from the counter which tells me how many people visited my weblog, i would definitely want to learn if i have managed to convey what i had in mind, and hence the comments are essential.
Contradiction is something which has always been an issue in my case, and here is a perfect example i guess..well...Bottom-line is, a visit to my blog is definitely worth the time (or mebbe not), the comments are also well-taken and understood...but anticipating a response to the same would be foolish, because i might just never clarify on what i have been writing.
Comments please?? :D