CHARACTER SKETCH – MARY MALONEY Mary Maloney is a very interesting character who possesses many character traits. To start with, Mary is very loving towards her husband, in the beginning. The author writes, “ She loved him for the way he sat loosely in a chair, for the way he came in a door, or moves slowly across the room with long strides.”(177) This information shows that any action or movement that her husband does, she absolutely loves because she feel as if her husband means everything to her. Apart from Mary being a loving person, she can also be very sneaky. Roald Dahl explains, “She sat down before the mirror, tidied her hair, touched up her lips and face. She tried a smile.” Immediately after killing her husband, Mary decides to act as normally as possible to cover up, she practices in the mirror a normal conversation with her grocer, so she doesn’t look suspicious or agitated. Furthermore, Mary Maloney can be a very persuasive person when she wants to be. Mary says, “Please, she begged. ‘Please eat it’”. When reading this text, one can conclude that Mary persuades her husband’s colleagues to eat up the murder weapon (the lamb) under the pretext it will make her feel better. Mary uses the situation of events to get herself out of trouble. Besides being persuasive, Mary is also calculation, as after she kills her husband she doesn’t call up the ambulance like any other person would. Instead, she hides her crime. Dahl writes, “’That’s the way, she told herself. Do everything normally. Keep things absolutely normal and there’ll be no need for acting at all.” (180) This shows that as part of her plan to hide her crime, she calculated a plan top make sure that when she arrives home from the grocers, everything is that way it should be and nothing unusual had happened. So, overall, one can conclude that Mary is a persuasive, sneaky, calculating person who unintentionally kills her husband who is the only man she’s ever loved.