Obsession In The Landlady By Roald Dahl

785 Words2 Pages

Generally, each human has an obsession, it could be anything like video games or cell phones. But your obsession or your affection to someone or an object can occasionally lead you to bad decisions. Roald Dahl’s tale with a twist, “The landlady”, takes place in Bath. Billy has arrived in Bath for business, and he needs to find a low-priced hotel. Billy appears across a bed and breakfast to be a guest of. The landlady allows him to stay the night for a cheap price. The landlady manipulates Billy to get him to stay so she can poison him, and eventually stuff him; keeping him as a beautiful possession. The landlady is obsessed with youth, beauty and ends up killing and stuffing Billy. The main lesson of the story is that obsession can lead you …show more content…

The landlady is so obsessed with beauty, she lets Billy stay in the Bed and Breakfast for a cheap price of five and sixpence a night, including breakfast. She was terribly nice to him. Each thing was extremely cheap, so she could keep Billy there as long as she wanted to. One example of her manipulating him was ”The room itself, so far as he could see in the half-darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture. Animals were usually a good sign in a place like this.” What that factor is she's making the place look warm and welcoming. Therefore he stayed there because it felt like home. In the story, Billy says, “‘That parrot. You know something? It had me completely fooled when I first saw it. I could have sworn it was alive.’” Billy thought the stuffed parrot was alive because it looked so real, but it was real and stuffed. The landlady stuffed the parrot because of the beauty of it. The obsession of always having beautiful things caused her to kill the parrot and stuff it. One reason was that she lost her son, that made her lonely, which made her be obsessed with having beautiful things with her and never leave her side. She has already had killed and stuffed 2 other people, Christopher Mulholland and Gregory Temple. Christopher and Gregory resembled like Billy. Our beloved Billy was slaughtered and stuffed to be made into one of the Landlady's prized possessions of …show more content…

Billy picked his own path to his death. He should have foreseen that this bed and breakfast was not a good idea because it doesn't matter how comfortable and warm the place is, it shouldn't feel like home because home will always be home and it cannot be duplicated. For example, when Billy and the landlady were talking about Mr. Temple and Mr. Mulholland is dead, she mentions “‘But my dear boy, he never left. He's still here. Mr. Temple is also here. They're on the third floor, both of them together.’” this shows that she has both of the guys and they are dead because she has killed and stuffed them to be kept forever. Obsession has completely controlled her mind into not seeing that these beautiful creatures are humans too, just like her and she does not have the right to take their lives for her infatuated obsession over beauty. In the story the landlady indicated that Billy looked familiar to Mr. Temple and Mr. Mulholland. When Billy said his age was seventeen, the landlady said, “‘Oh, it's a perfect age! Mr. Mulholland was also seventeen. But I think he was a trifle shorter than you are, in fact, I'm sure he was, and his teeth weren't quite so white, you have the most beautiful teeth, did you know that?’” in this, she finds Billy looking similar and same age as Mr. Mulholland but she found Billy's teeth better from Mr. Mulholland. There was more and more

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