Prescribing one mood and atmosphere to the story "Lamb to the Slaughter" is tough. It's tough, because the piece goes through several different moods.
When the story begins, I would describe the mood as calm, peaceful, warm, and welcoming. Mary Maloney is patiently sitting at home. She is counting the minutes until her beloved husband comes home.
The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight-hers and the one by the empty chair opposite. . . Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come.
Mary is the quintessential doting wife. Additionally, she is pregnant, and the text says that she was practically glowing with pregnant beauty. When Patrick gets home, Mary gets up from her sewing to greet him, and then she gets him a drink. That's a great welcome home for Patrick. It really is a beautiful scene.
Then Patrick has to go and ruin it all. As he begins talking to Mary, the mood of the story shifts. The mood weaves a line through cold, confused, numb, and heartbroken. Patrick coldly tells Mary that he is leaving her and then announces that he will not be staying for dinner. Mary is at first confused by his words.
And he told her. It didn’t take long, four or five minutes at most, and she say very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word.
After Patrick is finished talking, Mary is so stunned that she operates in an unfeeling (numb) daze.
When she walked across the room she couldn’t feel her feet touching the floor. 90 She couldn’t feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now-down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met.
That mood continues until Mary clubs Patrick over the head with the leg of lamb. At that moment, the mood of the story switches again. The mood becomes tense, cold and calculating. Mary takes on an extremely cool and calm demeanor as she rehearses her alibi and goes about getting rid of the murder weapon.
It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast.
Once the police show up, the mood is quite tense. The reader is kept on the edge of his seat, because it it unclear whether or not Mary is actually going to get away with killing her husband.
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