How does Roald Dahl create tension and suspense in his short stories for adults through the

characters, events, settings and language?

Roald Dahl was a very talented writing that was born in Llandaff, Cardiff, in 1916. He spent most of
his early life moving from private school to private school. Dahl then went on to service as a fighter
pilot during the Second World War. During this period he had a near fatal crash in North Africa,
which inspired Dahl’s first published short story, ‘Shot Down Over Libya’. Dahl served for several
more years and ended the war as a Wing Commander. Dahl early work was published by the
Saturday Evening Post but he found greater success as a child’s author, with successful titles like,
‘James and the Giant Peach’, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, and ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’. He also
wrote shorts story’s for adults, who in the end he wrote over 60, the most successful and famous of
these collections was, Tales of the Unexpected.

Roald Dahl uses the title to create tension and suspense with many different techniques. One of
these techniques is how he add deception into his titles for example ‘Lamb to Slaughter’ if this was
literal the story would be about a lamb going off to the slaughter house but in fact its about a
woman who brutally kills her husband with a leg of lamb, after he tells here some bad news.

He also creates tension and suspense in the way he adds suggestion into his titles. He uses this
technique the title, “The Way Up to Heaven” from this it gives you the thought that someone is
going to die in the story. Also “The Way Up” suggests it’s a journey. Even though it suggest that
someone is going die it give you no clue who, this creates tension massively as it makes you think
through out the book which character is going to die.

Roald creates a lot of tension with the techniques he uses in the title “The Landlady”. The
technique he uses is that he saying Landlady that gives you the stereotypy image of a nice friendly
Landlady. But when Dahl adds the word “The” into the title it makes you think what is so different
about this Landlady to every other Landlady so this creates tension and suspense.

Roald also creates a lot of tension through the different ways he sets up the settings. The setting
when he arrives at the train station creates for number of reasons "it was about nine o clock in the
evening and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky". The fact that it is night, gives the
whole town a gloomy, dark sense to it, as if it's a special night, and a night where something is going
to happen. Also the fact that it is nighttime suggests that there are going to be few people on the
streets. "The air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks". This quote
also adds the image of a dark, gloomy and cold town. Also; in ‘The Landlady’ they first make the
setting of the B&B from the outside look cosy, warm and friendly because there was animal inside,
like the little dog curled up in front of the fire place ‘Animals were usually a good sign in a place like
this’. But then inside the B&B it all changes suddenly as it seems to be deserted which is strange for
a B&B. Also the animals turn out to be stuffed ‘I stuff all my little pets when they pass away…’ which
takes away any of the comfort the character gain thinking it was a good sign having pets. Also when
inside there is a strange smell of medical supplies in the air, ‘now and again he caught a whiff of a
peculiar smell’ this creates a lot of tension as this is a strange smell to have inside a B&B, it also
makes you think why they is there such a smell.
 There are three different setting in “The Way Up to Heaven” that are, the house, the car; the
airport and they all create tension and suspense. The house creates tension and suspense because it
is big, dark and Roald writes that it is not a friendly place that doesn’t have many visitors. This
creates tension as it makes you think what the people are like that live in the house like so that they
don’t get many visitors, so this thought creates tension and suspense. The setting of the car creates
tension because the husband has gone in the house to find it, but really the present is in the car
‘wedged down firm and deep, as though with the help of a pushing hand. This creates tension
because it shows that husband knew the present was in the car because he help push it down the
edge of the seat, and that he’s just in the house wasting time to punish his wife

The setting in “The Lamb to the Slaughter” creates tension because it is just a normal house that
after one dramatic event it is turn into a crime scene. The real tension comes from the thought that
you think that one of the several police officers is going to find something in the house that is going
to ruin Mrs Maloney cover up.

Roald Dahl creates the most tension and suspense through his characters. For example the
characters in The Landlady create a lot of tension and suspense. The landlady creates tense by the
way she acts towards Billy Weaver and the unusual way she talks about her previous tenants, ‘ There
wasn’t a blemish on his body’. The way she looks at Billy, ‘…her blue eyes travelled slowly all the way
down the front of Billy’s body…’ makes us think why does she look at him in this way, as it is unusual
and unprofessional for a landlady. Billy also creates tension because he has no idea that he is the
victim of the Landlady, also because he can’t remember where he saw the other tenants names
which we no was in a newspaper saying that they’ve gone missing, ’…wasn’t that the name of the
Eton schoolboy who was on a walking tour through the west country and then all of a sudden…’. His
creates tension because we don’t know if Billy will remember before he becomes the latest victim of
The Landlady.

Roald also creates tension with the characters in ‘Lamb From the Slaughter’ the character she
creates most of the tension with is Mary Maloney as she the murder and there the tension that she
will she get caught through out the story. Mary Maloney murder husband also creates tension
because from the beginning of the story he is acting differently and it makes you think that
something is wrong or that’s he’s hiding something, he also creates tension because he tells
something to his wife that makes her think to kill him. Sam the grocery shop owner even though he
not really in the story creates a lot of tension because he has the power to ruin Mary alibi but he just
don’t know.

Roald also creates tension throughout “The Way Up to Heaven” with the characters. One of the
ways Roald Dahl creates tension is the way when Mrs Foster coming back from Paris she says to her
grandchildren that she we be back soon even though earlier in the book it say, “It had taken months
to persuade her husband to allow her to go.” So this makes you believe that she knows something is
different at home and she will be coming back in the not too distant future. The Sentence, “…had he
been watching her closely, he might have noticed that her face had turned absolutely white and that
the whole expression had suddenly allured.” This creates tension because it makes you think want
she heard at the door to make change her mind so suddenly and just leave her husband behind. Mr
Foster also creates tension throughout the story he does this by constantly torturing his wife
mentally with the fear she has of missing or being late to things for example, “Her husband came
after her, but he walked down the steps slowly…” and “I shouldn’t be surprised if the flight was
cancelled already.”

The narrative voice is a very important element in Roald Dahl’s books. Be it either a first-person or
a third-person narrator, they all use the some of the following features: they are intrusive, all
knowing and in control. The reader is addressed by the narrator a number of times with questions,
pieces of advice and instructions, this gaining the reader’s attention in the story.