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The Landlady (Roald Dahl) Essay Topics & Writing Assignments

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay explaining the significance of the title of the novel, “The Landlady.” How does the title reflect (or impact) the main characters? How does the title reflect the story’s themes? How does the title’s meaning change over the course of the story?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the role of foreshadowing in the story. How does the author prepare the reader for the ending from the very first page?

Essay Topic 3

Analyze the author’s choice to tell this story using Billy’s limited perspective. How does this point of view create suspense for the reader?

Essay Topic 4

Discuss the importance of briskness and how it helps to explain Billy’s character. How does the idea of briskness contribute to his fate in the story?

Essay Topic 5

Billy finds himself involved in a few conflicts over the course of the story. Choose one instance...

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"The Landlady" and Other Short Stories

By roald dahl, "the landlady" and other short stories essay questions.

How does Roald Dahl explore gender roles?

In his stories, Dahl often casts women who appear non-threatening as femmes fatales . In "Lamb to the Slaughter," we meet Mary Maloney, a doting pregnant housewife who murders her husband after he tries to leave her. A similar situation occurs in "The Way Up to Heaven," as the obedient Mrs. Foster leaves her husband and races to the airport to make her flight to Paris, apparently leaving her husband to die trapped in an elevator. In both of these instances, docile wives reassert their power through murderous means, unsettling domestic and gender roles.

Discuss the effects of ambiguous endings in Dahl's stories.

Several of Dahl's stories end ambiguously, including "The Visitor," "The Landlady," and "The Way Up to Heaven." In "The Visitor," Oswald sends a mysterious box to his nephew with his collected diaries. In the last story in the diaries, Oswald learns that he may have slept with the leper daughter of a kind man that takes him in after his car breaks down. But, this is only a possibility, and the story ends before an explanation is given. In "The Landlady," a similar cliffhanger is presented, as the landlady tells Billy that the two previous boarders still live on the third floor of the home, and Billy tastes something strange in his tea, but the story only suggests that the landlady is poisoning Billy and will taxidermy him. Similarly, "The Way Up to Heaven" ends with Mrs. Foster calling an elevator repairman and explaining that the elevator is stuck between the second and third floors, suggesting (but not definitively showing) that her husband is dead after being trapped there.

These ambiguous endings allow for the reader to imagine the final outcome, creating heightened suspense. By not quite resolving the climax of the story, Dahl creates memorable conclusions and leaves the reader in anticipation.

Discuss the role that World War II plays in Roald Dahl's stories.

Roald Dahl's early stories all focus on Royal Air Force pilots in World War II, and on the effects that World War II has on these young men. This semi-autobiographical element informs these stories, and introduces a darker tone to many of Roald Dahl's works. Later stories by Roald Dahl also seem inflected with some of the darkness and pessimism of the war, as insidious people and events continue to occur. In "Genesis and Catastrophe," Dahl again revisits the war with a story about the birth of Adolf Hitler, which presents a unique moral dilemma to the reader. Since this story is about a baby, could there have been a different historical outcome if any of the factors changed? What would happen if Hitler had died like his mother's other children? What does it mean to wish death on a baby, especially if that baby grows into a tyrannical murder and dictator? World War II introduces these questions and themes into Dahl's stories, and shapes this collection.

What is the significance of the frame story in "An African Story " ?

The frame story begins with a narrator finding a story in a pliot's suitcase. This pilot crashes near the old man's shack, and after hearing a story the old man tells him, writes the story down "in his own words" (4). Telling this story "lift[s] a great weight off [the old man's] shoulders" (4), which suggests that the old man feels some guilt for setting up Judson. The frame story indicates the significance of perspective and the written word, as the pilot writes this story down and preserves the old man's tale. This framing also explores the old man's possible guilt and regret, and sets the story in the context of World War II.

How does Dahl use revenge as a central theme in his short stories?

Revenge plays a crucial part in many of Roald Dahl's stories. In "An African Story," the old man exacts revenge on his assistant, Judson, after Judson beats the old man's dog. Meanwhile, in "Lamb to the Slaughter," Mary Maloney exacts revenge on her husband when he tries to leave her by murdering him with a leg of lamb—the dinner she had planned to prepare for him. A similar situation occurs in "The Way Up to Heaven," as Mrs. Foster seems to leave her husband trapped in an elevator in order to make her flight to Paris. Here, revenge serves as an assertion of power, and a restoration of order. But, in "An African Story," the old man's account of his revenge lifts a great weight off of his shoulders, suggesting there is some guilt in exacting revenge, and redemption in sharing these stories.

“The Landlady” and Other Short Stories Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for “The Landlady” and Other Short Stories is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Which quote from paragraph 12 best support the answer to Part A?

Possible Answer: "forcing him to stay where he was and not walk away from that house". .. note, only is Part A is questioning the definition of another word. Please include all information in your posts.

In "Lamb to the Slaughter," what is a mistake Mary makes when establishing her alibi at the grocery store.

I suppose she establishes her alibi after she kills her husband.Before she left the house after hitting her husband over the head with the frozen leg of lamb, she put the leg of lamb in the oven to begin cooking. This however doesn't end up being...

The Landlady

The emphasis of conflict and sense of foreboding mystery all lies with the character of the landlady hence the title.

Study Guide for “The Landlady” and Other Short Stories

"The Landlady" and Other Short Stories study guide contains a biography of Roald Dahl, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About "The Landlady" and Other Short Stories
• "The Landlady" and Other Short Stories Summary
• Character List

Essays for “The Landlady” and Other Short Stories

"The Landlady" and Other Short Stories essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of "The Landlady" and Other Short Stories by Roald Dahl.

• A Rose for the Landlady: A Dissection of the Affections of the Dahl and Faulkner’s Macabre Murderesses
• The Landlady: An Enigma
• "Lamb to the Slaughter": Roald Dahl's Sacrificial Killing of Criminal Profiling

Lesson Plan for “The Landlady” and Other Short Stories

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to "The Landlady" and Other Short Stories
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• "The Landlady" and Other Short Stories Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for “The Landlady” and Other Short Stories

• Introduction
• Short stories
• Collections

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.