Lamb to the Slaughter and The Speckled Band

Lamb to the Slaughter and

The Speckled Band essay

Roald Dahl, a twentieth century writer wrote the short story ‘Lamb to

the Slaughter’ a murder mystery in 1954, shortly after the Second

World War and rationing. The story I propose to compare it to is

Arthur Conan Doyle’s pre twentieth century murder mystery ‘The

Speckled Band’ written in 1892. Although the two stories are in the

same genre of murder mystery they are very different. The stories are

different because Doyle’s story is a conventional murder mystery with

typical stock characters, whereas ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ has

detectives who aren’t fully focused on the case in hand and the

villain, the victim’s wife does not fulfil the stereotypical character

profile of the criminal in Noonan’s mind. An indicator that these

stories were written at different times is in Dahl’s story cars are

mentioned whereas in Doyle’s story travel is by carts and by train.

The scene at the start of Dahl’s story presents the reader with a

typical 1950’s family scene where the pregnant wife makes her husband

top priority in her life. At the start of the ‘Speckled Band’ the

mood is very sombre and slow because Watson is looking back over all

his past cases and is having flashbacks about a specific case. The

way the story is told, in past tense and by him looking back lets the

reader know that Watson survives this particular case. In my opinion

the start of Dahl’s story is more appealing to the reader because it

gives the reader a friendly more up to date environment to which the

reader can relate to. An example of this friendly environment is when

the author tells us ‘The room was warm and clean’. The fact that the

room is both warm and clean makes it feel cosy to the reader because

warm is usually associated with friends and family. When you look

closely at Dahl’s story you can see that there are some clues that

some sort of crime will occur here. An example of one of these clues

is when Dahl needlessly adds ‘but without anxiety’ to his story, which

indicates that that something, will happen here. Another way in which

Dahl gives the impression that something will happen is when he begins

to describe the actions of the husband, such as, when he rattles the

ice cubes in his glass which gives a clue that he is agitated and has

something on his mind. On the other hand Conan Doyle’s story almost

prepares you for what is coming with the mood that is set and the way