Over the course of literacy, we’ve done lots of writing and reading. For this November, NEFARIOUS November as we called it, we’re reading short stories that are nefarious and mysterious. For instance, our teacher picked Roald Dahl’s short stories to read, learn, and discuss. The first short story from Roald Dahl that we read is “Lamb to the slaughter” which talks about a story about a peaceful, calm, and innocent woman, Mary Maloney, who is totally obsessed with her husband; however, turn out to be a guilty murderer who killed her own husband after hearing the separation that her husband wants to have between them. She murdered him with a giant big frozen lamb leg. No one knows or even thinks about the fact that she is the murderer because she is 6 months pregnant and totally a calm woman. After the murder, she created an alibi and destroyed the evidence. She makes herself totally innocent.
From this story, we have learned some literary devices from Roald Dahl which is irony. There are three types of irony including verbal, situational, and dramatic irony. We’ve analyzed why Roald Dahl used irony in stories like this. We found out that Roald Dahl is such a genius author that could bring up a short story that has lots of hidden meaning.
After reading the story, we have a Mary Maloney’s trial. We need to decide whether Mary Maloney is guilty of murder or it’s just a crime of passion causes by her insanity. We have prosecutions, defenses, Mary Maloney, Witnesses, and the jury. We need to take one of the roles in the trial which motivated me to choose the prosecution team with my another friend. We need to fight against the defense team saying that she is not insane. She is guilty of first-degree murder and has planned the whole scene. It is hard to fight as a prosecution because we all know that she is a pregnant and pregnant woman can easily get affected by something and leads to mental health imbalanced. However, there’s something inside me that encouraged me to fight and find back JUSTICE even though it’s just fake trial in a story. As a result, the jury has decided to convict Mary Maloney of first-degree murder with all of the shreds of evidence and statements stating Mary Maloney is not insane.
“We the Prosecutors believe that after you, the jury, consider this you will put together right decisions so that when you go home today, you don’t feel guilty that it’s actually you who makes a man not rest in peace.” – Our team, the prosecution’s closing statement.
After doing this trial, it motivated me a lot. It made me think of justice that this world has. It made me want to change the way justice works nowadays because of the desire, the passion, the encouragement inside me that I have that can someday change the world.
