Irony

In "Lamb to the Slaughter," Roald Dahl uses irony to make the story memorable.For example, Mary told the grocer, "Patrick's decided he's tired and doesn't want to eat out tonight" when she went to buy vegetables (p. 321).In this situation, Mary is pretending like her husband is alive, even though she knows he is dead, which makes this verbal irony.This encourages the readers to keep reading to discover if she will get caught. In addition, one of the detectives said, "Probably right under our very noses," as he was eating the leg of lamb (p. 324). This shows that It's dramatic irony because we know that the meat that the police officers are eating was the actual murder weapon.This also shows that this is memorable to the readers because they know she killed her husband but men investigating the murder do not. In conclusion, stories with irony are interesting because they keep the reader reading.