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The Landlady Essay

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The Landlady Critical Essay

Choose a short story in which there is an interesting character. By referring to appropriate techniques, explain how the writer makes this character interesting.

The Landlady by Roald Dahl is a captivating short story which follows a boy named Billy Weaver who whilst just trying to find a place to stay gets drawn into a dangerous B&B. Billy looks through the glass and sees that the B&B looks nice and cozy with lots of animals, but he doesn’t know the truth about the B&B’s owner the landlady. He rings the bell and the landlady answers instantly before Billy even has time to take his finger off the doorbell suggesting she was watching him. As he enters, he notices that there were no coats, umbrellas, walking sticks …show more content…

It is strange because when Billy shows up to the bed and breakfast the Landlady is abnormally nice to Billy and makes the B&B extraordinarily cheap. When the Landlady was showing Billy his room the Landlady says, “I’m so glad you appeared,” “I was beginning to get worried.” After the Landlady says this, it makes the reader skeptical about what the Landlady means and what her true intentions are. The word choice of “worried” suggests that the Landlady was overly concerned for Billy but that is quite suspicious as why would the Landlady be concerned about a stranger who she should not know is coming. This suggests there is something supernatural at play and the Landlady isn’t quite as she seems and is just putting on an act trying act nice to deceive …show more content…

It’s exposed to the reader that she is a taxidermist when Billy says “The parrot” he said at last. “You know something? It had me completely fooled when I saw it through the window. I could have sworn it was alive.” “Who did it? “I did” This suggests that the landlady is exceptionally good at taxidermy and that it is almost unnoticeable or at least exceedingly difficult to spot. The Landlady also says “I stuff all my littles pets when the pass away. Will you have another cup of tea?” “No thank you” Billy said. The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds.” The word choice of “faintly” suggests that the tea has been poisoned by something but that it has tried to be hidden and hard notice the taste as to not arouse suspicion about the poisoned tea. The fact that the landlady said that she “stuff all her little pets when they pass away” suggests that the Landlady is going to kill Billy with the poison and the stuff

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This is particularly powerful because it showed the reader that the landlady really liked the two men before Billy. Lastly, the theme of Looks may be deceiving was sent to the reader when he wrote “not in the least she said i stuff all my pets when they pass away.” Clearly Roald Dahl was effective in using the craft move of tone to teach us that things may not always look how they

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The sentence, “...I stuff all my pets myself when they pass away” shows that that the landlady is strange due to the fact that she stuffs animals for pleasure and also hints to Billy that he may be next (5). Not only does this foreshadow that Billy may be killed, it also shows that Billy is being too trusting because simply brushes off that fact that the landlady touches dead animals/bodies and does not seem the least disgusted or hurt about it. Roald Dahl's foreshadowing is not the only way he uses craft to develop this idea. The repetition in the story also shows that Billy is too trusting. Dahl explains that by how each word was like a large black eye that was holding him, and compelling him to stay— “BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST” (2).

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