Who is the protagonist of the landlady

  • Mr Greenslade (The Boss)
  • Two Victims
    • Christopher Mulholland
    • Gregory W. Temple
  • The Landlady (The Antagonist)
  • Billy Weaver (Protagonist)
  • More Articles

Mr Greenslade (The Boss)

He is Billy’s boss back in London. It is at his behest that Billy travels to Bath to find accommodation. He is portrayed as strict and disciplined who asks for absolute best from his employees.

Two Victims

Christopher Mulholland

He was one of the entries in the logs and of the same age as Billy. In fact, Billy even remembers his namely vaguely from the newspapers.

By the text of the story, we can make out that he must have been a victim of the lady and was stuffed like her other taxidermist works. She evens says that he never left the inn, eluding to the fact that his body remained o the floor he stayed.

Gregory W. Temple

Another victim of the lady, he was older than both Mulholland and Billy. He was also talk, handsome and impressionable.

The Landlady (The Antagonist)

She is the creepy old woman who runs a quaint little inn in Bath. She is skilled at conversation and taxidermy. She has a fetish for young and vulnerable boys and stuffs them like her pets after drugging them.

On the outside, she is polite and welcoming. She is also very evasive when pressed with questions by Billy and keeps on insisting that he drinks the tea. She seems focused and cold-blooded murderer.

Billy Weaver (Protagonist)

The young man from London travels to Bath to find accommodation for his stay. He is determined to stay and drink at a pub but is captivated by a quaint little inn run by an old woman.

He is naïve and trusting and falls for the warmth of the place and its host. However, he remains sceptical of the lady who seems to have a thing for young boys and keeps evading his questions.

Her inn is also deserted even with its meagre charges and this spooks Billy. When reads the entry log, he only finds two previous visitors (both assumed dead in news). He realizes what the lady is really up to but it comes too late as he drinks the tea infused with drugs.

In the last moments of the story, he gets an honest reply from the lady who acknowledges that he is the first boy to enter her place for a couple of years.

  • The Landlady Summary
  • The Landlady Analysis
  • The Landlady Themes

This passage was written by a 9th grader

Character

            In Roald Dahl’s The Landlady, Dahl focuses on two main characters in the story. The first, Bill Weaver, is the protagonist of the story. Dahl quickly introduces Weaver as the protagonist by allowing the reader to follow him around on his “journey” and allow the reader to comprehend the character’s thoughts. Dahl also provides more information on Weaver than any other character in the story. For example, Dahl provides the following sentence to get a better understanding about the character: “Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy-blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine.” The reader gets a chance to create a visual of the character and even has insight into the character’s feelings. The antagonist of this story is the landlady that Billy stays with. She can be described as the antagonist because of her desire to kill Billy Weaver. When Bill asks if any other people besides him had stayed in her Bed and Breakfast, the landlady replies, “No, my dear. Only you.” The fact that she wants to kill Billy Weaver is seen when Billy remarks to himself, “The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn’t much care for it.” The bitter almond taste can be presumed to be cyanide, a poisonous liquid. Lastly, a character that supports (supporting character) the story is the porter Billy meets when he arrives in Bath. Dahl describes the porter as a supporting character when the porter tells Billy, “Try the Bell and Dragon. They might take you in. It’s about a quarter of a mile along the other side.” If the porter had not told him to go towards the Bell and Dragon, Billy may have gone in the opposite direction, and may never have found the Bed and Breakfast.   

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Who is the antagonist in the landlady?

The story's antagonist is the unnamed landlady who runs the Bed and Breakfast that Billy chooses to stay in. Although she appears to be sweet, friendly, and generous, the story's plot twist reveals that she is a cruel woman, or insane, capable of horrifying and wicked crimes.

Why is the landlady the antagonist?

The antagonist of this story is the landlady that Billy stays with. She can be described as the antagonist because of her desire to kill Billy Weaver. When Bill asks if any other people besides him had stayed in her Bed and Breakfast, the landlady replies, “No, my dear.

What type of character is Billy in the landlady?

Billy Weaver We learn that he is ambitious (he walks “briskly” in order to emulate his superiors at his job) but is also somewhat complacent (Line 33). He is quick to categorize, as we see in his dismissal of the landlady as a harmless, dotty old woman, and is not as observant as he thinks he is.

What happens to Billy in the landlady?

In 'The Landlady,' the landlady kills Billy by putting arsenic in his tea. As Billy is drinking, they discuss the previous two boarders, both of whom had disappeared after having lodged in her home.