Figurative Language In The Landlady

Figurative language and imagery set the stage for descriptive and mental pictures that readers will remember after they finish these short stories. In the short story, “The Landlady,” Roald Dahl writes about a young man named Billy Weaver was on his way to The Bell and Dragon when he felt some sort of compulsion to The Bed and Breakfast nearby. The women who had answered looked completely innocent to Billy for she was very kind. Billy then went inside and soon after signed the guestbook, but not before he noticed that there were only two entries before his. The landlady then had told him that neither Mulholland nor Temple had ever left the building and then was it that Billy realized that the dachshund and parrot in the den were both stuffed. In other words, not everything is as it may seem. In “The Tell-Tale heart,” Edgar Allan Poe writes about an unnamed narrator who has been greatly vexed not by the old man but the old man’s eye. The narrator soon then visits the old man’s room for seven nights and each time shining a light upon the evil eye. It wasn’t till the eighth night had the narrator killed the old man. It wasn’t until the three police men had come to check the house was it when the narrator had started to feel great guilt and admitted to the killing. For this reason, suspense is portrayed in …show more content…
Sentences that use color words, size words and specific describing words help to create scenes in stories. In “The Landlady,” Dahl describes how “Each word was like a large black eye staring at him.” In other words, the character feels as if the words were “Holding him hostage” by forcing him to stay where he was. Similarly, Poe describes “I undid it just so much that a thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.” That is to say, the narrator feels disturbed and annoyed of the old man’s evil eye. Thus, by including details of figurative language, Poe and Dahl convey