Theme Of Suspense In The Landlady

The short story “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl is a great mystery because it has lots of suspense. In “The Landlady”, a seventeen year old boy named Billy Weaver has gone to London, and while searching for a place to stay, finds a bed and breakfast to stay for the night. But he didn’t decide to stay there, he was forced there. In the story, it states, “Each word was like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not walk away from that house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the window to the front door of the house,” (Dahl, 2). In this passage, Billy is actually being pulled to the bed and breakfast by some unknown force. The words “holding”,

Therefore, we are left in suspense. The mood changes in this part of the story because before, it seemed like a pretty normal story and now it becomes really weird. Then, in another part of the story, he is looking at the names on the check-in list in the bed and breakfast, where he finds 2 names that both sound extremely familiar. He starts talking to the Landlady about it, and she continuously keeps trying to change the subject. It states, “Wait just a minute. Mulholland… Christopher Mulholland… wasn’t that the name of the Eton schoolboy who was on a walking-tour through the west country, and then all of a sudden…”(Dahl, 4) In this passage, Billy is beginning to remember who the Mulholland boy was, but then the landlady interrupts him, making him almost completely forget. This creates suspense because the readers want to know what happened to Mr Mulholland, but Billy never finishes his sentence so we never really know what happens to this guy until the end of the story. This part foreshadows toward the end where she tells him that the two people on the check-in list are still in the house, and that they are