Theme Of Foreshadowing In The Landlady

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Roald Dahl’s realistic fiction story, “The Landlady”, takes place in London during winter. Billy Weaver, a seventeen year old, is looking around for a place to stay. He notices chrysanthemums in a window. Billy decides to stay at the boarding house When he is signing in the guestbook, he sees there are only two other names. Dahl uses foreshadowing and word choice to create the lesson that judging someone can be harmful in the future.
Judging someone before getting to know them is the story’s central issue. In the story, the landlady is welcoming him in and they start talking. For example, “After all, she was not only harmless- there was no question about that- but she was also quite obviously a kind and generous soul” (3). This is
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The short sentence, “his skin was just like a baby’s” (5). This is significant because it tells us a little about one of the guests that is staying there. This connects to this quote, “He could see the skin underneath, greyish-black and dry and perfectly preserved” (5). These quotes are connected in some way because she is telling him about the skin of one of the men that she claims still lives there. When she is telling him how nice his skin is, it hints about the stuffed dog’s skin and how preserved it was. This is foreshadowing because he sees the skin of the dog as she tells him about how nice the man’s skin is. It hints to suspicion as both the dog and the man’s skin are soft or preserved. Billy does not realise the connection. The second craft is word choice in the story. The words used in the story can help us imagine what is happening, “There were no shops on this wide street that he was walking along, only a line of tall houses on each side, all of them identical” (1). The describing words used that make the story interesting and flowy are wide, tall, and identical. This sentence can tell us where he is and what the setting looks like. The word choice can hint to what is going to happen. For example, “And suddenly he realised that this animal had all the time been just as silent and motionless as the parrot” (5). The choice of words make it a little eerie as it describes how silent and still the animal and parrot were. This means that they are not