The Landlady Essay

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The story tells about Billy Weaver, a young boy who arrives to Bath to work. On his way to a certain motel he sees a “Bed & Breakfast” sign and he decides to get in. He doesn't know that, but it's a life changing decision. There are two characters in the story, Billy Weaver and the Landlady. Billy is a bit naive, maybe because he's only 17. He feels lucky he got into the bed & breakfast, he likes the inviting landlady. Even after he tasted the “bitter almond” tea and saw those two names in the guest book, who looked familiar from the newspaper or so, he's not worried. Billy feels comfortable at the B&B, the atmosphere is a warm one and the optimistic boy feels welcomed. The landlady is described carefully, but the most important thing is missing, her name. We can understand how she looks like and that she's friendly and “motherly” but the fact that we don't know her name can imply that something may be wrong with her. The lady's description makes us think at first she's an old, charming, harmless lady but apparently, as reading through the story the first impression was quite a bit wrong. The atmosphere throughout the story is well explained. When Billy arrives to Bath we know it's 9 o'clock and the sky are clear. We also know it's very cold as described. When he arrives at the Bed and Breakfast we can see an image in our mind of how about it looks like; green curtains cover the windows, some pussy-willows beside them. Fire burning in the hearth and a dachshund sleeping on the near by carpet. Roald Dahl uses a limited third person point of view to tell the story. He focusses mostly on Billy even though the title of the story is “The Landlady”. He doesn't use many descriptions, only what is necessary because if he would have used more descriptions the climax point wouldn't be a turning point as it needs to be. If we had known the dachshund sleeping on the carpet

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