Three years no customers, finally one comes, but customers from before are still there? The story The Landlady by Roald Dahl is about a weird old lady and a young man named Billy Weaver. Billy is traveling to the city of Bath for his first job when he happens to run into an old boarding house that strangly draws him towards it. Roald Dahl uses foreshadowing to create suspense in his short story The Landlady by talking about her past guest in past and present tense, how the house forces him to stay, and how he recognizes her past guests names.
First, the old lady begins talking about her past guest in strange ways. An example includes when she states “Left?’ she said. ‘But my dear boy, he never left.’ ‘He is still here, Mr. Temple …show more content…
He says this when trying to walking away from the boarding house “Each word was like a large black eye, staring at him threw the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay”(pg. 63). The way he is describing how the house is not letting him leave, attracting him towards it suggest that this house may have something strange about this house. This quote shows foreshadowing by letting the reader know that this house is kind of creepy.
Another example of foreshadowing would include when Billy begins to recognize her previous customers. “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 the sudden… ‘Milk?’ she said.”(pg. 67). How the old lady suddenly interrupted Billy shows that maybe she doesn’t want him to figure wear he saw this story. This creates foreshadowing by showing the reader that she is a suspicious character in the story.
Roald Dahl uses foreshadowing in his short story The Landlady. Dahl does this by telling you only parts of the story, he does this to make the reader think more and make his stories more interesting. Would you like some