Roald Dahl successfully presents scary or creepy moments in his writing by using word choice, mood, and character development. Roald Dahl uses these three things a lot in his stories, each significantly contributing to the scary and creepy aspect of his writing. The first way that Roald Dahl presents scary or creepy moments in his stories is by using descriptive word choice. For example, in “The Landlady” he writes, “Skin underneath, greyish-black and dry and perfectly preserved.” This quote shows the revolting nature of this scene, when he finds out she stuffs her pets. This quote also helps show the creepiness of his stories because when he uses these descriptive words, it gives off an eerie feeling when you read them. Another example of unnerving word choice is in “Lamb to the Slaughter” when he writes, “...looking at the body, still …show more content…
For example, in “The Landlady” Dahl writes, “She seemed terribly nice.” This shows that early in the story the landlady was super nice to him, almost creepily nice, and later in the story as her character develops he then writes, “I stuff all my little pets myself.” This shows the creepy nature of her character as we get to know her deeper into the story. Also in “Lamb to the Slaughter” Dahl does something very similar with the character development when he writes, “She took his coat and hung it up.” This quote shows how at the beginning the wife is super kind to her husband and it seems like she loves him. Later in the story, Dahl then says, “All right, she told herself, so i 've killed him.” This quote shows that even know she was super nice at the beginning as her character developed she turned into a psychotic lady who is alright with the fact that she killed her husband. This shows that Roald Dahl successfully portrays scary and creepy moments by developing characters from super nice and sweet to scary and