The Landlady Essay The landlady; is she a normal bath B&B owner or a psychotic, sinister, visitor stuffing murderer? The Landlady seems from her physical appearance a sweet, middle aged woman who lives alone running her B&B. “She seemed terribly nice. ” These are the inner thoughts of Billy Weaver, when he first meets the Landlady. Roald Dahl is a very good and clever author, and he uses a clever method to make us feel so suspicious of the Landlady, he contradicts himself when he describes the Landlady and when Billy describes her. He gives her a sinister edge, “He pressed the bell- and out she popped!
It made him jump. ” But when billy is thinking about the landlady we can clearly see that in his opinions she is just a sweetheart. “After all, she not only was harmless—there was no question about that—but she was also quite obviously a kind and generous soul. ” On the other hand, Roald Dahl makes us very suspicious of the Landlady, making her say creepy and sinister things all the time, but unfortunately for Billy he doesn’t pick on them. “There wasn’t a blemish on his body” The main thing he uses is the landlady’s dialogue; it really alerts the reader to the evil lurking within her.
One of my favourite things that Roald Dahl does is make the Landlady seem very secure in what she is assaying once she has drunk the tea. Like the remarks about the people in the house. Before he had sipped the tea, she says; “We have it all to ourselves” But when she knows he has had the poison in the tea she says things like; “But my dear boy, he never left. He’s [Mr Mulholland is] still here. Mr Temple is also here. They’re on the fourth floor, both of them together. ” Another thing I like is the interrupting when Billy is so close to finding out the truth. “Now wait a minute,” he said. 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 . . . ” “Milk? ” she said. “And sugar? ” “Yes, please. And then all of a sudden . . . ” “Eton schoolboy? ” she said. “Oh no, my dear, that can’t possibly be right, because my Mr Mulholland was certainly not an Eton schoolboy when he came to me. ” The Landlady is a great book and I really enjoyed reading it because it has this rather dark and sinister edge that I look for in all the books I read.
