By: Fayza Elshafie
New changes are added to daily routines every day, but each reaction is unique in some way. The stories “The Veldt” and “Lamb to the Slaughter” both feature adjustments incorporated into families, but the responses to this adjustment were the same. Both narratives show a normal, stable family that suddenly changes when the father figure decides to modify the household in some way. Out of cold blood and outrage, a member of the family murders him and manages to get away with it. The two short stories, Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” and Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter” share the same basic plot, but different minor details.
In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” Mary Maloney, a pregnant woman, kills her husband, Patrick Maloney, after he develops a change within their family. Dahl describes the scene when he writes, “…Mary Maloney walked up behind him (Patrick) and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg of lamb as hard as she could on the back of his head.” A similar action is made in “The Veldt” when two children, Wendy and Peter, murder their parents when they wanted to shut off the nursery. Not wanting for an alteration to be implemented, the duo kept their technology but lost their mother and father. After the victim was killed, in each story, someone came to the house, saw a clue that would tell the story of the crime, but didn’t connect the dots. Mary got away with her act by literally feeding the murder weapon, a lamb shank, to her guests, a group of investigators. The irony of the situation is shown during the dinner conversation. “ ‘That’s a big bar the murderer must have used to hit poor Patrick. The doctor says the back of his head was smashed to pieces.’ ‘That’s why the weapon should be easy to find.’ ‘Exactly what I say.’ ‘Personally, I think the weapon is somewhere near the house.’ ‘It’s probably right under our noses.’ ” Unbeknownst to them, they had just let a ruthless killer hide her felony. This situation is paralleled when a man comes over to Wendy and Peter’s house. He saw the lions in the nursery catch some prey and eat it. Little did he know, the lions’ prey was actually his newly deceased friends, and he watched them die right before him. These two examples from the narratives show how they’re related, plot-wise.
Although the two stories share uncanny similarities, a few details, such as characters, differ from story to story. In “The Veldt,” there is already an established family, and the children, Wendy and Peter, murder their parents, George and Lydia. In “Lamb to the Slaughter,” a pregnant woman, May Maloney, kills her husband, Patrick Maloney. Each lifetaker’s motive and murder weapon also contrast each other. The kids murder their parents by locking them in a nursery with a pride of hostile lions. They do this to ensure that the adults don’t close down the nursery. There were also multiple hints to their untimely demise sprinkled throughout the tale. However, Mary killed her husband with a sudden blow to his head with a frozen lamb leg. She did this because of an unspecified reason that the reader can infer, but most speculate that he wanted to end their marriage. After the crime was committed in “The Veldt,” a friend of George and Lydia came to their house to meet them. He saw the victims’ bodies but didn’t realize it was them. But at the end of “Lamb to the Slaughter,” Mary calls a group of crime investigators to her house so that they can inspect the scene. They see and immediately recognize Patrick’s body, but Mary convinced them to unknowingly eat the murder weapon.
Despite having multiple differences in them, both narratives share an extremely similar overall storyline. They each have their own special characters and individual aspects to them. And although they have overlapping details, each story is recognized and well-known for its uniqueness and originality.
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