Comparing The Landlady And The Monkey's Paw

The house is dark and eerily quiet. This shows how not only tone but description of the setting is used to create suspense in that sentence. In the “Landlady,” by Roald Dahl introduction to Bill Waver, who is intrigued by this nice place called the “Bed and Breakfast”, and never got to leave. In the “The Monkey’s Paw,” W.W Jacob introduction is Herbert and Mr. White who receive a monkey paw that has three wishes but something went bad on the second wish. Therefore, suspense is depicted in both Roald Dahl's short story, "The Landlady" and W.W Jacob short story, "The Monkey's Paw" through the use of tone and description of the setting.

In Dahl’s short story and in Jacob’s short story, both depict suspense through tone and description. For example, in the “The Landlady”, the narrator stated, “I stuff all my little pets.” This example reveals suspense by providing the landlady killed and stuffed her pets. Furthermore,

another example from “The Landlady” was when Billy thought, “The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn’t much care for it.” By using this quote, Dahl provides suspense because the story leads to the inference that the landlady killed Mr.

Mulholland and Mr. Temple by giving them tea. This leads the reader to conclude that since Billy Weaver has tea, he will be killed by the landlady too. “The Monkey’s Paw,” reveals how Jacobs writes, “‘I wish for two hundred pounds,’ said the old man distinctly.” This example reveals suspense by providing just how Sergeant Major Morris gave a monkey paw to Mr. White, and how he has three wishes. However, something went wrong on the third wish. Another example from the “The Monkey’s Paw” was when Mr. White said, “Heard the creaking of

the bolt as it was slowly opened, and at the same moment he found the monkey’s paw and frantically breathed his third and last wish.” By using this quote, Jacobs provides suspense because we can infer that the monkey paw was a curse, and Mr. White used the third and finally wish. This leads to the conclusion on how Mr. White might die because an old man had the monkey paw before him and that was given to Sergeant Major Morris. Who then gave it to Mr. White and the old man’s last wish was to die. Therefore, suspense is depicted in both stories, "The Landlady" and "The Monkey's Paw" through the use of tone and description of the setting.
Suspense is depicted in both Dahl's short story, "The Landlady", and Jacob’s short story, "The Monkey's Paw". Suspense can be created through different literary elements. However, these two short stories share a common element in that both use tone and description of the setting to depict that suspense. The examples provided showed how those two short stories used tone and description to depict and make the audience understand that suspense was present in the atmosphere.