Preview

The Landlady Theme Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1298 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Landlady Theme Essay
In the story, “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl, the theme views how the characters and symbols shows that people should not easily trust strangers just by their appearance, because it may be vastly different than their personality in reality.

To begin with, the characters of this story emphasizes the theme which is if one trusts strangers easily based on the outer self, they may find themselves in trapped consequences. First of all, Billy Weaver denies of his own suspicions in both disguises of the landlady and the boarding house, that allows ‘them’ to delude him further on. Billy Weaver insists that the old landlady has been just an overly sincere person because of the way she welcomes him into the boarding house, how she prepares the bed ready
…show more content…
To start with, the tea features of how easily the old landlady murders the two residents that has stayed in the boarding house with no other visitors until Billy appears because in the novel, the old landlady will time to time offer Billy a cup of tea to drink, even after he refuses to. Specifically, the tea also represents how easily it allows the old landlady avoids questions from Billy in exposing evidence of ““and then all of a sudden ...” “Milk?” she said. “And sugar?” “Yes, please. And then all of a sudden ...””, that may have unmasks her dark nature (Dahl 360). Therefore, the tea tricks Billy into thinking that it is just another cup of tea she is offering because in the beginning of the novel, he recalls how he needs to have a good night's rest before he goes to the head office the very next morning. Let alone, the old lady keeps on convincing Billy to allow himself to have more tea, which he then forgets his main goal and the landlady easily manipulates him by him continuously believing that she is just having an innocent and pure presence. ““Mr Mulholland was a great one for his tea,” she said at length” where she compares similarly drinking tea with the previous resident, Christopher Mulholland, like how she is drinking tea with Billy now, but, “Never in my life have I seen anyone drink as much tea as dear, sweet Mr Mulholland”” (Dahl 380). Therefore, the old landlady must have put poison in the previous two residents’ tea when they were drinking it because she still claims that Christopher Mulholland and Gregory Temple were still living on the third floor, even though they both signs out the book 2-3 years ago. In that case, the tea signifies as the landlady’s weapon because viewing the tea as objects that are elegant and nice like how the landlady’s actions

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In “The Landlady” a short story by Roald Dahl, shows the theme appearances don't often reflect reality. The story starts with Billy Weaver who was going find a cheap hotel, when Billy discovers a small motel. Billy rang the doorbell and an old lady appeared, she acted so nice and…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tralfamadore Monologue

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages

    So it goes. Barbara had this special talent to repel people away. Her biggest worry however had always been her gone-absolutely-bonkers-father. She had taken Billy to an elderly house shortly after he’d decided to write letters about Tralfamadore to the local newspaper. Billy had always lived a life full of indignity and so, perhaps, had no great fear of death.…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “the self portrait between the Borderline of the mexico and the United States” by Frida Kahlo. Frida Kahlo is the border between mexico and the United States. The painting shows a shseems dark and gloomy but she’s wearing this pink flashy dress holding the Mexican flag in one hand and in another it looks like a cigarette. The United States side of the border is grey and filled with factories, tall buildings, some types of technology, and unlike the Mexican flag the American is covered in smoke from the factory. The Mexican side of the border is neutral and filled with historical buildings, plants, festival pieces for example their is a skull so that makes me think of the day of the dead, and the sky filled with clouds in one is the sun and another is the crescent moon. Frida seems like she’s stuck between two totally different cultures.…

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Landlady Analysis

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Dahl, builds a sense of foreboding in this story about a man named Billy on an innocent business trip and an old Landlady running a "Bed & Breakfast". The story in the beginning makes the Landlady seem creepy, but the story also makes the Landlady seem so nice. Through out the story she drops hints about how scary she really is. At the end of the story it all comes together, and we realized that this lady truly isn't harmless.…

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The work of fiction House on Mango Street is written by Sandra Cisneros. It shows the dreams of Esperanza, a little girl who lives on Mango Street, an impoverished area of Chicago. She likes writing and wants to be an author. Both Alicia and Esperanza view education and writing as a pathway to better life. Through these characters, the author suggests that education would offer a kind of freedom.…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the House On Mango Street, Esperanza Cordero is such an inspiring character seeing as she shows the ways in which change can alter your life. Because the story is told by her, the most developed character, the reader experiences her growth along with her, which is why there is such a contrast between who she was and who she is becoming. Throughout the course of the novel, Esperanza begins to develop from the shy, naïve child she was into a mature, decisive, well-rounded young lady.…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many children’s self identity change when they transfer into adulthood. In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, the protagonist, Esperanza, realizes she is becoming an adult. This transition greatly affects the way she identifies herself. Esperanza’s concept of identity changed within the novella The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros because she no longer views herself as a child and now views herself as an adult.…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The House on Mango street is a feminist piece of literature because it brings attentions to the sexist way the men in Esperanza’s society regard women. Esperanza tells her story by focusing on the women around her who are owned by the dominant men in their lives due to restricting gender roles that encompasses not only women but men. “My great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off...She (Esperanza’s grandmother) looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” (11) Cisneros brings attention to the cruel way that men in Esperanza’s society treat women. The normality of these discriminatory actions describes a gender role that society has set for men, to be the dominant figure in…

    • 273 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the 1960s, society was drastically different than what it is today. In particular, family life was a completely different way of growing up or raising children. Books, even those written in the present day, can express these differences using examples from the past. One book in particular, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, contains three families who exemplify the differences of raising children in that society to that of the present.…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Esperanza, from The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, has a twofold revelation as she conquers her fears of ending up in her community’s cycle of poverty and conforming to gender roles, then decides to help the women who cannot leave their unfortunate situations. Once Esperanza moves into her house on Mango Street with her family, she begins observing the various women who reside there. Though they are all different in their own ways, they share the same aspect: they live in poverty with a male figure, either a father or husband, who treats them poorly and suppresses their potential. Even the young girls are subject to playing the part of the woman’s role. One girl, Alicia, has “inherited her mama’s rolling pin and sleepiness…waking…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the book, House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Esperanza the main character faces a lot of conflicts throughout the book. However, I think the one that caused the greatest change in her was the external conflict of what society and men expect of her and other woman. She found out that love was nothing like she thought it would be, and that woman are thought of as objects and not people.…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Comparing the novel The Haunting of Hill House and the movie Poltergeist, there are many common factors they share. Both have a female character as a protagonist and a spirit as an antagonist. The two literatures, in print and film, also have the heart of the house revolving around a child's setting. There are still more similarities between both the book and movie, as there are dissimilar. The Haunting of Hill House is taking place in a setting where all of the characters are adult, as supposed to Poltergeist where the ages range from 5 to 60.…

    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the novel, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros, shows the importance of education through the different characters in the book the reason education is so important is because you need it so you can have a good job and the second reason is esperanza knows the importance of education and reason three is you need to strive for success.…

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the house, there are signs of housekeeping activities left half finished like the bag of sugar, the dish-towel on the table, and the quilt, details which the men find inconsequential and lead them to incorrectly assume that Minnie is a bad housekeeper. However, the men’s ignorance should quickly become apparent from the way that the women react to the unfinished tasks, “It was as if her mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table” (Glaspell 560) implying that there is more significance to the towel than meets the eye. Rather than serving as evidence of inept housekeeping, these minute details indicate turmoil within the household, cuing the reader to formulate their own opinions of what happened.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Once Mrs. Mallard came into her room, it was introduced to us that “there stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair” (46). Here, we are being introduced to a different emotion. The author starts to turn the story from sad and negative, to more positive and reassuring. This is because from the sentence we see that, “a comfortable, roomy armchair” symbolizes comfort and security. And the “open window” symbolizes connection to the world, in other…

    • 1140 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays