In the short story “The Landlady” by Roahl Dahl, diction is used to display an underlying contrast between a comforting tone, and an cold tone. Dahl uses diction at first to create an extremely dark and uncomfortable tone when describing the environment in which the main character is walking through. The air is described as being “deadly cold, and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheek” (1). The adjectives that Dahl uses in this quote describe the atmosphere as being quite frigid and gelid. But instead of using these adjectives to quite blankly describe the air, the author puts in some vocabulary so that the reader knows it is cold, but also knows that the author is describing something horrible about the cold. It was not cold, it was deadly cold, and it was not a cold wind, but a flat blade of ice on his cheek. The adjectives that Dahl is using, such as death and blades, form the perception of a dark and figuratively cold tone. Later on in the shot story, while the protagonist is looking for his inn, he peers through at the window of what seems like a nice room of an inn. He describes some aspects of the room like how “on the carpet in front of the fire, a pretty little dachshund was curled up asleep with its nose tucked into its belly. The room itself, so far as he could see in the half-darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture” (1). It is visible that Dahl is trying to shift over to a tone with a sense of security and comfort. The adjectives Dahl uses, such as “pretty” and “pleasant”, display that the room that the main character is peering into is quite congenial. The diction used to describe the room will create a comforting tone, as the reader can see hope of a serene and warm resting place for the main character. The adjectives and diction used in “Landlady” by Roahl Dahl create a contrast in tones between these two parts of the story, dark and comforting, thus making these tones more prevalent in the short story.
