Nefarious November is the time that we read many different stories that are about murder, scary, witchcraft, and many other blood-curdling short stories. After finishing one of the short stories we are creating a PACE response about difference literacy devices such as irony, foreshadowing, and symbolism to show ours comprehend, practice providing textual evidence, and improve the writing skills. We had read the “Lamb to the Slaughter”, “The Landlady”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, by Roald Dahl and the Master of Horror, Edgar Allan Poe. Here is one of the PACE response to foreshadowing device:
“The Landlady” by Roald Dahl
November 20, 2017
Foreshadowing is an advance sign or warning of what is the upcoming, in the future of the story. The author uses foreshadowing to add dramatic tension to the story by building anticipation about what might happen next. Authors also use foreshadowing to create suspense or to communicate information to help the readers to understand what will come. In the story, “The Landlady,” Roald Dahl uses many foreshadowing to assemble reader’s mind toward the story. In this short story, there are many traces of foreshadowing that Roald Dahl uses. As the story stated, “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 demonstrates one textual evidence that readers can presume that something must have happened in the story; for me as a reader, I can infer that the landlady already stuffed Mr. Temple and Mulholland and kept them on the third floor together and now she is waiting to stuff Billy as well. For example, “The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn’t care for it…” This is where the readers are able to anticipate the story that the landlady is attempting to poison Billy in order to stuff him like the other two. As the quote stated, “Everyone has to do that because it’s the law of the land, and we don’t want to go breaking any laws at this stage in the proceedings, do we?” This verification, the readers can indicate that the landlady also going to murder Billy as stated that she is going to break the laws in the future, which is to kill Billy. So Roald Dahl uses a lot of foreshadowing in this short story in order to engage reader’s mind into his story in order to predict the story ahead as they notice one evidence in the story.
