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Roald Dahl
There Are Certain Requirements For A Good Short Story. How Far Are These Met In Two Short From Different Centuries.(A Vendetta - Guy de Maupassant and The Landlady)

There Are Certain Requirements For A Good Short Story. How Far Are These Met In Two Short From Different Centuries.(A Vendetta - Guy de Maupassant and The Landlady)

Gary Mills 11A

There Are Certain Requirements For A Good Short Story. How

Far Are These Met In Two Short From Different Centuries.

To create a good short a author must meet certain requirements in order to keep the reader interested. We read two different short stories wrote by different authors in different centuries to see if these requirements were met.

The first story is A Vendetta, by Guy De Maupassant, which was written in the 19th century. The story Vendetta has a very slid structure in which it has a great beginning, middle and end. Maupassant has linked the sentences together very cleverly to create this solid structure. The language in Vendetta in is not as you would aspect as it was wrote a long time ago, also the author is French which may has something to do with the difference in language. The setting of vendetta is very quiet and has a slow plot. As well as a slow plot A Vendetta is also very dark and mysterious. Maupassant makes the story very quiet at the beginning when he writes that the houses are spread around like birds nests’ this suggesting that this place or town is forbidding and unwelcoming again its adding a mysterious touch to the story. Vendetta is very cold and dangerous whereas The Landlady, which was written by Roald Dahl, has a very comfortable feel about it even though there is an aspect of murder in the story. The Landlady is the other story that we have been studying which was wrote in the 20th century.

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The setting of The Landlady is very comfortable in the way that you think the woman is trustworthy even though she is slightly deranged. The plot is the opposite to Vendetta as it is warm and cozy. Dahl has cleverly made the woman secret to keep you guessing about her personality. In Landlady you never really get told that she murders her two only guests, you are just to assume that. One of the big differences between Vendetta and Landlady is that Maupassant takes us with the avenger whereas in The Landlady you follow through the story with the victim. On of the main characters in The Landlady is that of Billy Weaver who is possibly going to be the next victim of the landlady. The landlady as she is old and feeble cannot kill physically so it is thought that she kills victims by poising them with a cup of tea. Billy Weaver is a normal man who needs a place to stay when he sees the bed and breakfast and as it has in animals in the window he thinks it will be sound for the night that he intend to stay for. Billy’s mind soon changes though because as he rings the doorbell a split second later an old lady answers the door and invites him in. He is again surprised when he views the guest book to find only two names, but as him is tired he decides to go on with it.

The owner of the bed and breakfast is slightly batty in the way that she talks and acts around Billy. It seems as though she has been on her own for some time as she acts very lonely and jumps at the chance top help Billy. There is a significant similarity between the two stories thus being that in both stories the murders are women however they don’t physically kill their victims. In Vendetta the woman kills her victims by training her dog to bite at there neck, but in the Landlady she kills her victims by poising them with something in the tea that she makes for them. In The Landlady Dahl has left out a lot of information, the main information to be left out is the ending as you never get to know what happens to Billy Weaver whereas in Vendetta Maupassant leave much, however he doesn’t tell us much about the murder of the widows son. That is on big difference between the stories, how much is left in and how much is left out. I believe that people in the 20th century want to be able to make there own ending whereas people in 19th century want to know the whole plot.

Finally I think that both stories meet the requirements needed to make a good short story but I think that The Landlady is the better if the two, both though are entertaining and very well wrote.