please tell me a short story summary of Roald Dahl
Answers
Story:
This most remarkable thing about this story, I think, is the timing. I don’t want to give the surprise away to those of you who haven’t read it, but just think about the fact that Dahl was able to write this incredibly compassionate and and yet subtly ironic story (about a woman who has lost three children in the last eighteen months and desperately wants her newborn to survive) after witnessing countless horrible atrocities in World War II. It’s amazing. It’s also worth noting that this story, unlike many others, does not have a surprise “twist” at the very end. There is a shocking revelation, but the reader arrives at it gradually throughout the story.
Spoiler warning! The narrative begins immediately after the birth of a baby, a boy. The doctor tries to reassure the mother Klara that the child is healthy and will survive, but she has lost all hope after her other three children have died. We also learn that she and her husband, Alois, have recently moved to this new city and that he is an overbearing, unsatisfied sort of man. The doctor manages to convince her that her new son is all right and she decides to name him Adolphus, or Adolf for short. She finally gets to hold her little Adolf and falls in love with the beautiful child. Her husband arrives (Note: the doctor addresses him as “Herr Hitler”!!) and comments on the boy’s small size. The doctor pleads with him to give his wife some needed support. He finally kisses her and tries to comfort her. “He must live, Alois,” she cries. “He must, he must… Oh God, be merciful unto him now…” Of course, we know that the very infant whose life she prays for is none other than Adolf Hitler, the man responsible for millions of deaths and years of suffering in World War II.
13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist,.
"The Landlady" is one of Roald Dahl's best known stories, and encompasses a theme of mystery and horror.
Billy Weaver is traveling down a dark street at night, cold and a bit hungry, and in need of a place to stay. He looks around town, but finds nothing. Soon, he stumbles upon a house with a fire-lit living room and a sign on the front door that tells that it is a boarding house. He rings to doorbell, and a nice old woman greets him at the door. She tells him to come in, and he does, signing his name in a boarding house guest book. As he reads who else has stayed there, he notices that the last guests were there a while back, and that their names seemed familiar. He shrugs it off as perhaps a distant memory of someone he went to school with, the reasoning behind why the names seem familiar.
The woman offers Billy with some food and drink, but he does not accept, saying he would like to go straight to bed. However, he eventually accepts some tea and sits down with the woman. He notices her pet parrot sitting quietly in a cage, and a dachshund sitting on the floor right in front of the cozily warm fire place. Together, they have a conversation about the guests that were there before, and the woman says some strange things about a Mr. Mulholland, proclaiming, "His skin was so soft". Finally, Billy speaks up, saying that the parrot fooled him from the window, he thought it was alive. The woman says that it is no longer, as well as the dachshund. Billy is worried more than ever, and finally realizes where he saw the names from the guestbook - they mysteriously disappeared, it was in the newspaper..
The story ends abruptly with Billy asking the woman if there have been any other guests there in the last three years. She says no, only him.