"Personally, I think it's...right under our noses."

Lamb to the Slaughter Short story by Roald Dahl

For my final project I would like to adapt “Lamb to the Slaughter” a short story by Roald Dahl. This is the story of Mary Maloney who, after being told by her husband Patrick that he wants to divorce her, kills him by hitting him over the head with the frozen leg of a lamb. When she realizes what she has done Mary becomes worried as she is pregnant in the sixth month and is afraid what may happen to her child. She thus goes to the grocery store as if nothing has happened, and when she returns pretends to find her dead husband in the living room. Mary calls the police. One of the men, Jack Noonan, she knows as her husband was police officer and Jacks college. Along with Jack come a doctor, a police photographer, a forensic scientist and two detectives. They try to determine and find the murder weapon while the lamb leg is slowly cooking in the kitchen. Noticing that, Mary offers it to the police men arguing in honor of her husband, who would have wanted her to offer the guest something, they should finish it. As they are hungry and don’t want to upset the newly widowed woman the police eat the lamb, all the while discussing what the murder weapon may be, and that it is probably right under their noses. This causes Mary Maloney to laugh in the other room, and the story ends.

I like this short story as it contains plenty of black humor. It is short enough to be staged completely, and one can shorten the character list to five actors (see below). Two settings would be needed for the three scenes: the Maloney’s house, and the grocery store. This way the setting isn’t too complicated. To adapt this, one would need to turn the story (which can be found with the link below) into a script first. In order to give an equal amount of lines to all the actors it may be necessary to shorten some, and lengthen other parts of the story. I would need five actors for this story, one of which must be a women, and one if not two should be a man or played as such.

Character List:

Mary Maloney

Patrick Maloney

Sam from the Grocery store

Jack Noonan (Policeman)

Doctor

two detectives

police photographer

a man who knew about fingerprints

Actors:

Actor 1:    Mary Maloney

Actor 2:    Patrick Maloney

Actor 3:    Sam from the Grocery store, detective 1

Actor 4:    Jack Noonan (Policeman)

Actor 5:    Doctor, police photographer, a man who knew about fingerprints

Scenes:

Maloney Home

1. Mary ENTERS
2. Patrick ENTERS
3. Mary EXITS to get the lamb
4. Mary ENTERS and kills Patrick
5. All EXIT

Grocery Store

1. Sam ENTERS during blackout
2. Mary ENTERS
3. All EXIT

Maloney Home

1. Patrick ENTERS during blackout (dead body)
2. Mary ENTERS
3. Doctor/police photographer/a man who knew about fingerprints + Jack Noonan + detective ENTER

Link to the Story:

http://www.depa.univ-paris8.fr/IMG/pdf/lamb_to_the_slaughter_by_roald_dahl-2.pdf

IB Exams for the Win!!!!

Overall my exams went well. I was struggling a bit with the first one as I still felt tired from being sick over the weekend. I spend about half an hour to write an outline because I could concentrate very well and I hoped this would stop my writer's block. It did help and I ended up writing five pages of essay. I found the first to be the more difficult exam as it had only three questions to chose from, and I wasn’t a big fan of any of them. I chose a question that asked to find a scene pivotal to a particular theme. I chose the theme of Tradition vs. Modernity and the school performance talking about how Kahu was acting as a bridge that leads her tribe into a bright future. She is both interested in her culture and modern, shown already by the fact that she is a girl and still a great leader which is not considered to be possible traditionally.

    For the exam on poetry I had memorized “Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye and “Nature is what we see” and “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson. I found this exam a bit easier. I was also less tired and more concentrated during it. There were six questions to chose from and I chose the first one again. It was referring to the assertion from a famous poet that “Poetry makes nothing happen” asking to what extent the work from the poets I studied had the potential to make anything “happen”. I argued that the all three poems I studied have the potential to make something happen, if presented to an open minded thoughtful reader. “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” teaches about hope being everywhere which can cause people to think more positively.  “Nature is what we see” teaches about the variety of nature which can be found everywhere yet seems incomprehensible for humans. It reaches about not taking things for granted. I ended with “Blood” which I felt had to the most to teach. I talked about how it is effective by ending in the three questions so instead of ending with a conclusion it puts the questions into the reader's head, provoking him to really deeply consider them. This poem teaches about peace, understanding and acceptance. For this exam  I wrote an outline and the poems, before writing a six page essay.

Overall I feel relatively good about my exams and it also feels good to have them behind me as it greatly reduces the pressure on me and now I can relax and enjoy the last five weeks of the class without scary exams waiting. 

The Patterns of Poetry- Practice Essay II~Notes

QUESTION:

Patterns, aimed at the mind, the heart or the ear of the reader, are used by poets to

achieve their purposes. In the work of at least two poets you have studied, examine various

patterns and their effects.

Notes:

Poems used:

Emily Dickinson’s “Nature is what we see”:

"Nature" is what we see—                             A    5

The Hill—the Afternoon—                           B    4

Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—        A    5

Nay—Nature is Heaven—                            C    4

Nature is what we hear—                              D    5

The Bobolink —the Sea—                           A    4

Thunder—the Cricket—                               E    3

Nay—Nature is Harmony—                        A    4

Nature is what we know—                          F    5

Yet have no art to say—                              G    6

So impotent Our Wisdom is                        H    5

To her Simplicity.                                        A    3

• poem is contained of only one stanza
• rhyme scheme: ABACDAEAFGHA
• repetition of the rhyme A such as in: see, bee, sea, Harmony, and Simplicity
• underlines the poem’s last word ‘simplicity’
• litle periods used common for Emily Dickinson
• lines alternate between containing 5 and 4 words
• trait is first broken by the Line ‘Thunder-the Cricket’ →  only contains 3 words and thus acts as a break in the text
• pattern is completely broken, the last three lines being 6, 5 and 3 words
• makes the end of the poem stand out
• amount of words in the last three lines decrease
• each word in the line seem more significant.
• “Nature” is repeated five times→ clearly significant
• thought the poem is only made of on stanza there are some lines that act as breaks
• start with the word ‘Nay’ and as there is two of the the (poem is divided in three sections)
• Author capitalises certain words to make the stand out.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Blood”

• Rhyme scheme: free verse
• more of a story
• Two stanzas
• Ends in question → thought provoking
• Begins with Arab being peaceful (cups the fly rather than kills it) but ends with war
• Who is a true Arab to which the author keeps on referring too? What makes one Arab truer than another one?
• Pattern peace vs war

the Thing with Feathers

The poem “Hope is the Thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson is a typical example of a poem in which the meaning is open to the reader's interpretation. The poem is ambiguous as it can have a positive and hopeful meaning, as well as a depressing one. It can be seen as full of hope, which  can be found anywhere in the world, however one can also see it as dark and sinister like other poems by the author, where hope may exist but doesn’t reveal itself to the author. It is up to the reader, his thinking and reading, to interpret the poem.

The poems positive interpretation tends to be the first one to come to mind. Here the poem described hope as the “thing with feathers” which “sings the tune without the words and never stops at all”. Hope is compared to a bird, which symbolizes freedom. This bird of hope sings a tune without words, which could be whatever anyone who hears needs it to be in order to feel hopeful. The most significant part of this is the last line: “And never stops-at all”. This gives the idea that hope never dies Emily Dickinson used the format of the dash in the last sentence to empathise the “at all”. Also there is a sort of repetition in this sentence as it first says “never stops” which is a strong point on its own, but is then reinforced with “at all”. This is just one example of the ways that the poem could be interpreted positively.

The last stanza of the poem is the most ambiguous. It says:

“I’ve heard it in the chillest land-

And on the strangest Sea-

Yet-never- in Extremity,

It asked a crumb -of me.

The is a positive and a negative interpretation to this. The positive one is that hope can be found even in the darkest places, and even in the worst cases it is free. However there is a different meaning to this as well. This meaning is linked to the author's life. Emily Dickinson stayed at home for most of her life. This must have been hard for her and it could be why she gave so many of her poems a second more sinister meaning. The one in this poem is that she may have heard of hope being in the darkest places, however even in her worst moments the bird of hope did not come to her. The last line is ambiguous; One: it could mean that the bird of hope was never asking for a crumb as reward thus hope is free, but Two: as feeding a bird with crumbs is a pleasant thing, one could see this that hope never came to her to let her feed it and thus have a part of it. Meaning that Emily Dickinson never found the hope that others told her about. It is up to the reader to chose one of the two interpretations for this poem.

The Curious Incident of the BLOG in the Nighttime

The Broadway play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” is based on a novel by the British writer Mark Haddon. It tells the story of a fifteen year old boy named Christopher who suffers from Asperger Syndrome. The book is written from his perspective and how he sees the world.

The Broadway show “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” is similar to the book. While the book is the Diary that Christopher writes while doing his detective work to find the murderer of his neighbor's dog, the play is that diary acted out. Christopher's teacher Siobhan reads parts of the diary out loud while they are acted on stage, while other parts are directly portrayed by the actors.

What I liked most about the play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” was the stage. It  looked like a box, its walls divided into equal squares. There were a great amount of special effects involved in the play. This included digital projection and a sort a drawing technique in which certain edges of the squares-that made up the walls and floor of the stage- were lit up to create shapes which could resemble buildings or other things such as furniture. There seemed to be no part of the stage that did not have a certain purpose to it. If it wasn’t a small table that could ascend from the floor, than it was a door that if opened would reveal a compartment filled with props.

As the play was performed from Christopher's perspective I felt like the stage allowed us as audience to view the world through his lines. When he imagined something, such as the red line that would tell him where to go, it would appear on stage for the audience to see. When Christopher enters the train station he soon gets overwhelmed by all the people and noise. To show this there was commercials projected on the back wall, the more overwhelmed Christopher got the more commercial was seen. It was read out loud and sound many were read at the same time making them incomprehensible.

The main flaw that I could see in the performance was that it was, just like a novel, a bit lengthy. Especially towards the end when Christopher arrives in London and then goes back to Swinden, it could have been shortened. Also they play didn’t seem to have the typical structure of plays with a climax, thought there were some scenes that had more action than others, the play overall was relatively steady. Thought this worked with the idea of it being told from Christopher's mind it nevertheless added to the play's partial lack of agitation.

Nature is What we See

"Nature" is what we see—                          A    5

The Hill—the Afternoon—                        B    4

Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—     A    5

Nay—Nature is Heaven—                         C    4

Nature is what we hear—                           D    5

The Bobolink —the Sea—                         A    4

Thunder—the Cricket—                            E    3

Nay—Nature is Harmony—                      A    4

Nature is what we know—                        F    5

Yet have no art to say—                            G    6

So impotent Our Wisdom is                      H    5

To her Simplicity.                                     A    3

1. Structure:

The poem is contained of only one stanza. The rhyme scheme is: ABACDAEAFGHA. It is hereby important to note the repetition of the rhyme A such as in: see, bee, sea, Harmony, and Simplicity. The repetition of this rhyme ultimately underlines the poem’s last word ‘simplicity’. Like it is common for Emily Dickinson, there are barely any periods used (only one at the end making the poem seem like on long sentence), however if one were to enter more periods and count the sentences there would be about seven sentences. For the most part of the poem the lines alternate between containing five and four words. This trait is first broken by the Line ‘Thunder-the Cricket’. This line only contains three words and thus acts as a break in the text. The next two line again have the the pattern of four and five words, and then the pattern is completely broken, the last three lines being six, five and three words.  This makes the end of the poem stand out to the reader. It is also important to note that the amount of words in the last three lines decrease, the last line containing only three words. This makes each word in the line seem more significant. The word Nature is repeated five times and is so clearly significant. Also thought the poem is only made of on stanza there are some lines that act as breaks. These lines start with the word ‘Nay’ and as there is two of the the poem is divided in three sections. A final thing that I noticed was the author's choice of capitalizing certain words to make the stand out.

2. Content

The poem describes the simplicity of Nature which can be found and seen everywhere but is difficult to describe in it beauty. Nature is described as ‘Heaven” and “Harmony”. Something that is there and is beautiful, but without our influence. In the last line it uses an objection, when first saying that one’s wisdom is too “incompetent” to describe the “simplicity” of Nature. Here the words incompetent and simplicity object each other.