A Lamb To Slaughter Analysis

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The first way that these stories compare are, Dahl and Glaspell both make the wives the killer of the story. Dahl sets up his murder, by having Mr. Maloney come home and tell his wife, Mrs. Maloney, something that was horrifying and something that gave her anger. With this in mind, Mrs. Maloney decided to go to the freezer in the basement and pull out a frozen lamb leg for dinner. Rather than cooking it for dinner, like she said she would, she snuck up behind her husband and whacked him on the head with the frozen lamb leg, killing him. Similarly, in Glaspell’s story, John Wright is the victim and Minnie Wright, his wife, is the murderer. Minnie’s husband had been treating her like a maid in her own home, and he had taken away all her happiness. …show more content…
For instance, how the cops/ investigators of the crime scene are not able to find the murder weapon. In A Lamb to Slaughter, Mary ends up cooking the frozen lamb leg, that she killed her husband with, and when it is ready, she feeds it to the cops. The cops eat the lamb leg, while discussing the possible places where the weapon could be found and the possible items that could be the weapon. Similarly, in A Jury of Her Peers, Mrs. Wright hides her evidence under some roll of cloth in a box that looks like it might hold scissors; however, it holds the motive to her husband's death. The bird in the box is killed the same way that Mr. Wright was killed, leading to the conclusion that Mrs. Wright killed the bird to plot her husband's death and once she saw how it all layed out she made the move. While the cops don’t find the evidence, the Sheriff’s wife and Mrs. Hale do find this motive, but don’t bring it up to the cops because they don’t want Mrs. Wright to be punished for the crime. Nevertheless, these two stories are similar due the fact that the cops look too far into the situation and never find the murder weapon in either …show more content…
More specifically, the cover up stories for the murders. In Dahl’s story, Mary ends up going to the store and coming home “surprised” at the sight of her husband lying dead on the ground. When the cops come over, she cooks the lamb leg, or the evidence, and asks the cops to eat it because she can’t eat it herself. While in Glaspell’s story, Minnie Wright ends up putting the evidence she has in a little sewing kit box, and puts it in the basket underneath of the quilt, where the cops won’t even think to look. In the end, these short stories differ due to the way the women cover up their