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"He crushed its head with a stone and left the carcass to the flies that swarmed around the bloody flowers."

This graphic account details the aftermath of Miss Lonelyhearts's bungled sacrifice of the lamb in "Miss Lonelyhearts and the Lamb." The lamb is clear-cut symbol for Jesus, as the Bible also explains; just as Jesus died for man's sins, so does the unblemished, innocent lamb in a sacrifice. But Miss Lonelyhearts, in his attempted sacrifice, misses his mark with the knife, and the poor wounded lamb escapes. This botched episode implies the failure of religion in the modern world, and points out that Miss Lonelyhearts is guilty of living up to his full Christian potential. However, he redeems himself somewhat when he puts the animal out of its misery, as the passage shows. However, he uses a stone to do the deed—a material that frequently symbolizes man's aggression against nature. Moreover, the flies that devour the lamb's carcass show the continuing corruption of the modern world, one in which an innocent lamb is not merely sacrificed, but brutalized.

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