The Landlady Roald Dahl Analysis

There is a well-known saying that things are not what they always what they seem to be. This is the focal point of Roald Dahl’s short story “The Landlady,” a tale that is as seemingly charming as it is creepy. Throughout the story, Dahl creates an eerie theme of duality that emphasizes the catastrophic results that stem from the unfulfilled desire for human companionship. This largely explored theme heavily foreshadows the abrupt, but telling conclusion of the story that shows the true human capacity for violence.
Foremost, the concept of duality is expressed in the story through the character of the landlady. This middle-aged unnamed woman appears to be a harmless owner of a bed and breakfast and is thought so by her sole guest, a seventeen-year-old …show more content…
Though the reader comes to find out that they are dead, the landlady pretends that they are still alive:“‘Left?’ she said, arching her brows. ‘But my dear boy, he never left. He’s still here. Mr Temple is also here. They’re on the third floor, both of them together,’” (Dahl 4). This passage serves to accentuate the landlady’s discord from reality by showing that she has harbored their dead bodies in her home for over two years and also foreshadow her similar intentions for Billy, as she serves him tea tasting of bitter almonds, implying that she had poisoned the drink with arsenic and will now taxidermy Billy like the rest of her “pets.”
To conclude, Roald Dahl uses the technique of duality to characterize the landlady in “The Landlady,” as it reveals her underlying sinister motives and shows her desperation for human interaction. These actions, a result of her extreme loneliness, not only reveal the innate instinct for want of companionship but the notion that violence can be justified to satisfy one’s needs. Through this theme, Dahl exposes the most fearsome idea of all, that any and every human is capable of such