Dec 23, 2009

Lamb to the Slaughter | Historical Context

The Post-War Decade
Dahl began his writing career in 1942 with a story about being shot down while fighting in North Africa. Violence, whether associated with warfare or with crime, continued to fascinate Dahl and figures prominently even in his childrens’ stories. ‘‘Lamb to the Slaughter’’ belongs to the first full decade of Dahl’s writing career and to the first decade of what historians call the Post-War period. This period witnessed the sociological and cultural transformation of the Western world and took hold as strongly in the United States, where Dahl had...