Literary Terms
What term describes the use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in the story?
Foreshadowing
What is the primary setting of "The Veldt"?
A high tech house with a virtual reality nursery.
What is one major theme in "The Landlady"?
Deception and appearances, Danger in unexpected places, The cruelty of adulthood, The perils of trusting others
What is the main theme of "The Yellow Wallpaper"?
The detrimental effects of societal and patriarchal restrictions on women's mental health.
Define the word "veld"
Open country in southern Africa.
What is the term for the central character in a story?
Protagonist
What is the main theme of "The Veldt"
The dangers of over relying on technology.
What unusual detail about the landlady's pets does Billy notice?
Billy notices that the landlady's pets, a parrot and a dachshund, are not actually alive but are instead stuffed animals.
What does the wallpaper symbolize?
The narrators trapped and restricted state.
What is the correct order of events in a plot diagram?
Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution.
What word refers to the emotional atmosphere of a piece of literature?
Mood
How does the story address the consequences of neglect?
The children come emotionally detached from their parents due to being raised by the nursery.
How does Roald Dahl use the character of the landlady to develop the theme of deception in the story?
The landlady’s friendly demeanor and attractive appearance are used to mislead the protagonist about her true nature.
What is the significance of the barred windows in the narrator's room?
They represents her confinement and lack of freedom.
What is a literary device?
Any linguistic technique that produces a specific effect in writing.
What term refers to the authors choice of words and sentence structure?
Diction
How does George Hadley's character develop throughout the text?
George originally does not believe the nursery is a cause for concern. By the end of the story George is desperate to help his family and makes a plan to shut off the whole house.
Give an example of foreshadowing in "The Landlady"
-The unsettling description of the boarding house
- The odd behavior of the landlady
-The lack of other guests, the strange photographs in the parlor
-Billy's tea tasting like bitter almonds
Discuss how isolation contributes to the narrator's decline.
It limits her social interaction and contributes to the narrators mental decline.
What is the difference between first person narrative and third person narrative?
first person" refers to a narrative where the narrator is a character within the story, using pronouns like "I" and "me" to describe their own experiences, while "third person" refers to a narrator outside the story, using pronouns like "he," "she," and "they" to describe the actions of other characters.
What is an Oxymoron? Provide an example.
a figure of speech that combines two words or phrases with opposite meanings to create a new idea. Ex: Jumbo shrimp
How does the story foreshadow the parents violent ending?
The parents finding George's bloody chewed up wallet and Lydia's bloody scarf in the nursery.
Explain the motivations of the protagonist and antagonist in the short story “The Landlady,” by Roald Dahl. What are the motivations of these characters?
In "The Landlady," the protagonist, Billy Weaver, is motivated by a desire for a comfortable, affordable place to stay while on a business trip, making him trusting and easily swayed by the seemingly kind and welcoming landlady;while the antagonist, the unnamed landlady, is driven by a dark, obsessive desire to preserve young men in a state of perpetual youth by killing them and stuffing them as taxidermy specimens
How does the setting in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” influence the mood and development of the plot?
The narrator is kept in a large, isolated house by her husband and is mostly confined to her bedroom. The narrator's negative feelings make her surroundings seem sinister and uncanny.
How do the use of literary elements convey the authors meaning?
the author embeds the theme or meaning into separate elements that make up the totality of the literary piece.