How Is The Landlady Used In Lamb To The Slaughter

Roald Dahl presents scary or creepy moments within this writing by using peculiar details, shocking, surprising situations, and by leaving suspicion to the reader. The two stories, The Landlady and Lamb to the Slaughter both show Roald Dahl’s skills of creating illustrative details and coming up with unusual situations to make the reader feel uneasy.

First of all, Roald Dahl uses multiple peculiar details to make the stories have a creepy effect. In the Landlady, the lady does very many abnormal things to make the story disturbing. For example, when Billy first approaches her home to ring the doorbell, she opened it immediately. The text claims, “...he hadn’t even had time to take his finger from the bell-button..”, which shows that the lady had been standing there, expecting him to ring the doorbell. Also, in Lamb to the Slaughter, the wife of Mr. Maloney, Mary, is very eager to please him and get him to a pleased mood. After Mary offered tea and supper multiple times, Mr. Maloney says, “Sit down… Just for a minute, sit
In Lamb to the Slaughter, after the husband tells the wife the news, she kept very calm at first. Then, after her staying calm and him telling her that he was going out, “she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.” This was very surprising because Mrs. Maloney was trying to please Mr. Maloney but all of the sudden, she killed him with the lamb leg and lost all of her calm. This wasn’t expected from a woman who seemed to show that she loved her husband very much. In the Landlady, after the woman had described the men in deep descriptions, she had told Billy, “I stuff all my little pets when they pass away,” which is completely abnormal and surprising. This shows that this old woman is going to stuff Billy and he will never leave, along with the the dead men that she stuffed that never