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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where does Mary tell the police officer on the phone that Patrick is when she calls them?
(a) Lying on the floor
(b) In his chair
(c) Slumped over the sofa
(d) On the stairs

2. What does Mary ask Sergeant Noonan to give her as the investigation continues?
(a) A drink
(b) A gun
(c) A notepad
(d) A police sketch

3. “Lamb to the Slaughter” was initially rejected by what periodical for publication?
(a) The New Yorker
(b) Readers Digest
(c) Harper’s Magazine
(d) Newsweek

4. Mary is said to watch Patrick as he relates his statement “with a kind of dazed” what?
(a) Amazement
(b) Horror
(c) Shock
(d) Relief

5. Patrick tells Mary after he’s finished his story, “So there it is. And I know it’s kind of” what?
(a) A shock for you
(b) Inconvenient
(c) A bad time to be telling you
(d) Angering

Short Answer Questions

1. How are Mary’s actions described when she kills her husband?

2. What look in Patrick’s eyes does Mary love, as described in the beginning of “Lamb to the Slaughter”?

3. What does Mary offer to get Patrick, but is turned down, after he arrives home in “Lamb to the Slaughter”?

4. What is Sergeant Noonan’s first name in the story?

5. Where does Mary discover her dead husband lying after she returns from the store?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is the concept of identity as seen in popular psychology depicted through the character of Mary in the novel?

2. Why do you think the author chooses not to detail Patrick’s story to the reader?

3. What conversation between Mary and Sergeant Noonan leads to the destruction of the evidence in “Lamb to Slaughter”?

4. What crucial information to the story is omitted? Why do you think the author omitted these details?

5. What central injustices mark the narrative of “Lamb to Slaughter”?

6. How is the setting described in the first paragraph of “Lamb to Slaughter”? What items are described in the room?

7. Whose point of view does the narrative of “Lamb to Slaughter” revolve around?

8. How is Biblical allusion depicted through the title of “Lamb to Slaughter”?

9. Whom does Mary call after “discovering” the body? What happens next in the story?

10. What action does Patrick commit in “Lamb to Slaughter” to propel the action of the story forward?

(see the answer keys)

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