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Theme Of The Lamb To The Slaughter By Roald Dahl

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Roald Dahl has successfully presented creepy moments and ideas in his writing by the very uncommon, but realistic scenarios the characters are put in, word choice, and character development. The author gives very little background information at the beginning of the story causing the reader to be surprised with how the characters develop throughout the story. One way the author has presented scary ideas was by putting the characters in scenarios that are possible to happen to anyone, yet they are very unlikely. In The Landlady, the main character is your average businessman just looking for a place to stay for the night in a town he’s not familiar with. He decides to stay in a bed and breakfast ran by an old lady who keeps her guests …show more content…

She was just going home with the vegetables on Thursday evening to cook dinner for her husband.” The reader knows the real story, in which that one is not true. This is creepy because now there is suspense toward whether or not she is going to get away with the story she tells everyone. Comparatively, the author presents menacing and fearsome ideas by character development. In The Landlady, the woman presents herself and a very pleasurable, harmless soul. The text says, “..she gave him a warm welcoming smile.” Toward the end, she keeps that eerie smile, but she starts to give hints letting him know that she’s going to kill him. Throughout the story she mentions Mr Mulholland and Mr Perkins “staying in her bed and breakfast.” The text says, “.. she looked up at him out of the corners of her eyes and gave him another gentle little smile. ‘No, my dear,’ she said ‘Only you.’” The way this developed in a creepy way was because she was giving vague answers, making it seem like the two men she killed, were alive and in their rooms. In Lamb to the Slaughter, the main character is six months pregnant and married. When the police come to search for evidence, they eat it. The police were unforeseeable, assuming the lady who offered them to stay for dinner, wouldn’t be a suspect of killing the man who is pregnant with her child. This is scary because not only is there a killer on the loose, but they will never find out it was her because there is no evidence due

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