Questions+about+The+Landlady

Read Roald Dahl's story, then answer the following questions. > a) He wants to impress his boss. > b) He wants to act like a successful businessman. > c) He wants to keep warm.
 * 1) Why does Billy Weaver walk “briskly” down the street (line 21)?
 * 1) Which aspects of the house make Billy feel it would be a good place to stay?
 * 2) Why did Billy not go to the pub?
 * 3) What was unusual about the way the landlady responded to the doorbell?
 * 4) Which aspects of the landlady’s appearance and voice make her seem trustworthy (lines 87-118 where she shows him his room)?
 * 5) What evidence is there that the landlady had been expecting a guest?
 * 6) What are the first signs that the landlady is very odd?
 * 7) Billy doesn’t finish his sentence about Christopher Mulholland. What was he about to say?
 * 8) Why is it frightening when the landlady says Mr Temple had perfect skin "just like a baby's"?
 * 9) What do you think the landlady means when she says "I stuff all my little pets myself when they pass away?"
 * 10) How do you think Billy will die? Explain why you think so.

CERT 2&3 Making Meanings The Landlady

**a.** What are Billy’s first impressions when he peers through the window of the boarding house? **b.** Why does Billy enter the boarding house, even though he likes staying in pubs? **c**. Describe the landlady’s house. What in the house is not what it appears to be? **d.** Billy keeps thinking he knows something about Mulholland and Temple. What is it that he knows but can’t recall?
 * Reading Check **

**1.** Review your reading notes. • At what point in the story did you first become suspicious that things in the boarding house were not quite normal? • What **predictions** did you make? Did events turn out as you predicted? • Were any questions left unanswered at the end of the story?
 * First Thoughts **

**2.** What seems to be the landlady’s idea of a perfect guest? What happens to her guests, and how do you know? **3.** One relevant fact you may not know is that potassium cyanide, a favourite poison in mystery and suspense stories, has a faint bitter-almond taste. Go back to the text, and find other clues throughout the story that **foreshadow** Billy’s fate. (Can you find a hint in the very first paragraph?) **4.** What do you think happens just after the story ends? (Does Billy realize the danger he faces? If he does, is it too late, or does he escape?) Explain. **5.** Skim back through the story to find the points at which Billy makes fateful decisions. Choose one of these moments, and describe what Billy does and why he does it. How might a different decision have changed the outcome of the story?
 * Shaping Interpretations **

**6.** What do you think Dahl’s reasons were for not making the house seem frightening from the beginning?
 * Connecting with the Text **

**7.** Both “The Landlady” and “The Listeners” (see below) present a lone traveller arriving at a house that hides a secret. What descriptions of the “phantom listeners” and the “lone house” in the poem could also be applied to the landlady and her “bed and breakfast”? ** The Listeners by Walter de la Mare **
 * Extending the Text **

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor:

5 And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; “Is there anybody there?” he said. But no one descended to the Traveler;

10 No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then

15 Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

20 By the lonely Traveler’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

25 For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head— “Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,” he said. Never the least stir made the listeners,

30 Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone,

35 And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. http://www.nexuslearning.net/books/Holt-EOL2/Collection%203/landlady%20HW.htm