Women are often portrayed as fragile and vulnerable in literature which affects the way that the “Land Lady by Roald Dahl” is interpreted. In order to create suspense early on in the story Roald Dahl has set the time at 9pm which can be interpreted as a time when darkness takes over light, especially when we consider that dark represents evil, the mood changes from optimistic and adventurous to an atmosphere of suspense. Dahl continues to use the weather as a simile in order to relate to the sinister subject at hand by stating that ...”The wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks”…. This shows that the wind was sharp and “deadly cold”, “flat blade” is associated with knives which is related to the danger of being cut or wounded.
“He didn’t know anyone who lived here”
This quotation shows that Billy is alone in a strange “new” city. It outlines his vulnerable position, where he has no-one to turn to. This also shows that Billy’s mood was uneasy, due to having to be careful in an isolated area.
Billy recalls a friend telling him that “bath was a splendid city”. The past tense is used in the quote to outline the past tense. This is further outlined in a later paragraph when Billy notices that “the houses were all identical “and that “the paint was peeling form the woodwork”. This yet again outlines why Bath ‘used’ to be a splendid city.
It is at this point when Billy notices as sign in the window that read…” BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST, BED AND BREAKFAST”. Roald Dahl used and alliteration to represent the sign as something supernatural and the font used indicates that it was almost as if the sing was shouting out at Billy. Inside the house Billy glimpses at the pleasant, friendly surrounding whilst looking thr...
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...house when Billy finally enters his room and he sees that The sheets have been turned back and that there was …”a hot water bottle placed between them to air them out”… This makes us think back to something that the landlady said …”she’s always ready”… We begin to wonder what the nature of her true intentions is.
The Landlady hasn't been given a proper name, making her seem more mysterious. She is a middle-aged woman who lives alone and owns a bed and breakfast. She is 'slightly dotty' and her appearance is as charming as ever. However, the Landlady seems to fit this description right up until the end of the story. Only the clues that the last two guests were upstairs, the way she knew every little detail of how they looked but couldn't remember their names and the fact that she was a taxidermist tells you that she isn't the harmless woman we are led to believe.
He later allows the reader to visualise his town through a description of his street. "Each deadbeat no-hoper shithole lonely downtrodden house in Longlands Road, Nowheresville." This repetition of colloquial negative adjectives expresses Billy's depressing feelings about his home. Billy's undesirable view of his town along with other factors such as being abused by his father aid his decision to leave and discover what else life has to offer. Because of his adverse position Billy decides to leave his town to seek a better life. To do this he becomes a homeless runaway which is his first transition in the
The readers are apt to feel confused in the contrasting ways the woman in this poem has been depicted. The lady described in the poem leads to contrasting lives during the day and night. She is a normal girl in her Cadillac in the day while in her pink Mustang she is a prostitute driving on highways in the night. In the poem the imagery of body recurs frequently as “moving in the dust” and “every time she is touched”. The reference to woman’s body could possibly be the metaphor for the derogatory ways women’s labor, especially the physical labor is represented. The contrast between day and night possibly highlights the two contrasting ways the women are represented in society.
...he rain’s sharp”. This is related to the night in the factory, which is meant to make the feeling of the events even worse. However, when Davis in the end describes areas out of the factory-driven town, where the richer class live, it is described as happy, beautiful place that is described as a ‘perfect town”. “If one oft’ with dwarfs wud come from t’ lane moors to-night, and gif hur money, to go out, -OUT, I say,-’out, lad, where t’ sun shines, and t’ heath grows, and t’ ladies walk in silken gownds, and God stays all t’ time-where t’man lives that talked to us to-night, Hugh knows,-Hugh could walk there like a king!” This quote shows that, what might seem like every day life to the richer class, is described as close to heaven for the people who live in the factory-driven town. Davis uses visual imagery to illustrate to the show the negativity of industrialism.
The Lady, the Tiger, or the Lamb Reading is a common pastime and hobby for many people. Whether it’s poetry, fiction novels, or biographies, there is a type of literature for everyone. Short stories are a great type of writing because while they are not too long, they have a fair amount of plot and literary devices. “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl and “The Lady, or the Tiger” by Frank R. Stockton are two short stories that engage readers and leave them to infer various big details. While they both are excellent passages, “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a far superior story.
Negative experiences of belonging within the individual’s place of residence results in low self-esteem and develops the desire to escape and seek belonging elsewhere. We witness this in Herrick’s The Simple Gift in Longlands Road, when Billy says, ‘this place has never looked so rundown and beat’, which conveys his lack of connection to the place through pejorative colloquial personification of place. The “rundown and beat” nature of “place” parallels Billy’s perception of both himself and his home by using the pathetic fallacy of rain. Moreover, his hatred towards “Nowhereville” is expressed using coarse language and the symbolic action of vandalising the houses of his neighbours with pejorative colloquialism in ‘I throw one rock on the road of each deadbeat no hoper shithole lonely downtrodden house.’ This shows the place of residence is an important influence on creating a sens...
The house Sylvie attempts to "keep" must accommodate change including the peace and threat implied by nothingness. "A house should be built to float cloud high, if need be...A house should have a compass and a keel" (184). Rather than being seduced by the ultimate and final separation of nothingness, Ruth learns (as a transient) that housekeeping can be an expansive and inclusive method of engaging and interpreting the world.
One of the key components of literature is the usage of elements, these elements of literature provides readers underlying themes that authors put into their story. Without these elements of literature, the author would have no way to convey their true messages into their works. In Zora Neale Hurston’s story “Sweat”, Hurston uses many elements of literature to convey the seriousness and true relationship of couples that have a history of domestic violence. However, a specific element of literature that Hurston uses are symbols which give readers a clearer understanding of domestic abuse and most importantly, the characteristics of the victim and perpetrator of an abusive relationship. The symbols that Hurston uses in her story are what fortifies her plot and characters in “Sweat”. The symbols that Hurston uses are necessary because it destroys the typical gender role stereotypes between men and women. This is necessary because there is such a difference between the portrayal of men and women, men often being superior to women. Hurston uses through her symbol to show some equality between men and women or at points women can also be superior against men.
At first glance, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving seems to be an innocent tale about a superstitious New England town threatened by a strange new comer, Icabod Crane. However, this descriptive narrative is more than just a simple tale because it addresses several gender issues that deserve attention. The pervasiveness of female influence in Sleepy Hollow and the conflict between male and female storytelling in this Dutch community are two pertinent gender issues that complicate Irving's work and ultimately enable the women of Sleepy Hollow to control the men and maintain order.
Many features of the setting, a winter's day at a home for elderly women, suggests coldness, neglect, and dehumanization. Instead of evergreens or other vegetation that might lend softness or beauty to the place, the city has landscaped it with "prickly dark shrubs."1 Behind the shrubs the whitewashed walls of the Old Ladies' Home reflect "the winter sunlight like a block of ice."2 Welty also implies that the cold appearance of the nurse is due to the coolness in the building as well as to the stark, impersonal, white uniform she is wearing. In the inner parts of the building, the "loose, bulging linoleum on the floor"3 indicates that the place is cheaply built and poorly cared for. The halls that "smell like the interior of a clock"4 suggest a used, unfeeling machine. Perhaps the clearest evidence of dehumanization is the small, crowded rooms, each inhabited by two older women. The room that Marian visits is dark,...
Through the view of 16 year old protagonist Billy, the reader is shown his struggles of being a homeless teen. Billy was in a state of homelessness because he ran away from "Nowheresville", and from his abusive father. This is proven on page 10, where in Billy's point of view it states, "The wind and rain hits you in the face with the force of a father's punch..." which implies that Billy knows what the force of a father's punch feels like. His abusive father is one of the main causes for Billy being homeless, and why Billy had hitched a train to Bendarat to start a new life.
The first portrayal of “Snow White” in 1930s showed the woman to be a product of the environment around her. The influence of the environment was depicted as having a great impact in influencing the character of women due to their naïve and weak nature (Cheu 135).
This world and its beliefs provide Billy with a way to escape the mental prison of his mind where even the sound of sirens caused him great distress. From the chronology to the diminishing reaction to the important moments in his life, Billy’s life becomes completely chaotic and meaningless, but he would not prefer any other alternative because this was the only one which was mentally
Billy is not happy to stay behind and tells the elderly couple not to mess with him because he knows they don’t really want to keep him and he knows that he has just been dumped off. The couple
From the beginning of this work, the woman is shown to have gone mad. We are given no insight into the past, and we do not know why she has been driven to the brink of insanity. The “beautiful…English place” that the woman sees in her minds eye is the way men have traditionally wanted women to see their role in society. As the woman says, “It is quite alone standing well back from the road…It makes me think of English places…for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden—large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.” This lovely English countryside picture that this woman paints to the reader is a shallow view at the real likeness of her prison. The reality of things is that this lovely place is her small living space, and in it she is to function as every other good housewife should. The description of her cell, versus the reality of it, is a very good example of the restriction women had in those days. They were free to see things as they wanted, but there was no real chance at a woman changing her roles and place in society. This is mostly attributed to the small amount of freedom women had, and therefore they could not bring about a drastic change, because men were happy with the position women filled.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.