How Does 'The Landlady' End?

This is the ending to ‘The Landlady’, by Roald Dahl. This is a really sweet and innocent young boy, and he just goes to a nice little Bed and Breakfast. But the landlady is a really nice person too, and she just keeps telling him about her ‘lovely’ guests that have stayed in the room before him. It doesn’t click with him until much later, and by then it’s too late. But the way the story ends is really good. You get to see what Billy sees, and that’s a cup of tea being handed to him, and then he tastes it and it tastes bitter, and he knows it’s been laced with something. It’s really good. The way Dahl tells the story is less than it could have been, and that’s what makes it so good. The last line of the story is that the tea tasted of almonds, and that gives me chills. Of course we know Billy is dead, but we don’t know that until the last line. It’s a great example of less is more when it comes to horror stories.

One of Dahl's short stories that has stayed with me for a long time is 'The Landlady.' The ending is very ambiguous and is very disturbing to the reader. A young boy named Billy Weaver checks into a house of a seemingly friendly old lady who runs a boarder. As the story goes on, there are many hints at something sinister going on. For example, there are names of previous guests in the guestbook and the landlady is quite eccentric. At the end of the story Billy Weaver is drinking tea that tastes of bitter almonds, which is one of the symptoms of having been poisoned with cyanide. The landlady also states that she 'stuffs' all her pets and the story ends there, leaving the reader to their own devices as to what happens to the young boy. The ending is masterful as it leaves everything to the reader's imagination, and the only thing that the reader knows is that Billy is going to be the old lady's next 'guest' and she will preserve his body.

What makes the story so memorable is the ordinary setting and the contrasts between the homey landlady and the implied horrific violence that Dahl is hinting at. In class, my fellow readers and I compared notes on what we thought had happened to poor Billy. Were we reading him as already long dead in that bed or did we imagine him lying there just moments before he would join the stuffed animals of previous guests? The ambiguity creates a sense of unease that lingers long after the story has closed and that’s what makes ‘The Landlady’ such a phenomenal read.

Roald Dahl is a master of writing stories that keep you on the edge of your seat, even when they’re as short as ‘The Landlady’. The story seems to end in a random and shocking moment, but close reading reveals that all the clues were there from the start. For instance, the landlady’s fixation with taxidermy is weird enough, but her claim that her previous guests were ‘perfect’ is even more strange. Dahl’s power is to create a growing sense of unease which culminates in Weaver’s shocking realization about his own fate. The tea he is given tastes bitter, and the landlady watches him with an intensity that isSuddenly, dread seeps into the stomach of the reader as he realizes that he is the Landlady’s latest stuffee.

Dahl cleverly attempts to lead you to believe that the landlady is sweet enough to eat, however when she says that she ‘stuff’s her pets, for example, she says it in such a nonchalant way that you can almost miss the menace. Dahl’s clever writing in this short story is to trust his readers to join the dots. Furthermore, it is excellent because it is devoid of violence and so therefore makes it even scarier because your imagination is left to fill in the blanks. This is also a short story that is extremely good to re-read as each time you shall discover even more foreshadowing in the story.