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Roald DahlA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
How does the landlady objectify Billy? What does she find most interesting about him? Do the story’s views on objectification align with your response to the Personal Connection Prompt? Why or why not?
Teaching Suggestion: This Discussion/Analysis Prompt invites students to make the connection between objectification and The Fetishizing of Youth. As with other “objects” in her house, the landlady uses her skill in taxidermy to preserve beings in a youthful state; in this way, she manages to overcome death as well as the idea of loss, something that is inevitable with progress and modernity. As a point of interest, Dahl takes the typical gender roles (i.e., the older predatorial male and the young innocent female) and reverses them; this is an interesting comment on gender, implying that older women are able to prey on younger men without suspicion since younger men do not learn to fear them. Furthermore, reversing the typical power imbalance in this relationship—here, giving the “dotty” old lady what seems to be the agency to trap and murder her victims—is an interesting twist for both the author and the reader and perhaps makes the content more palatable for the audience.
By Roald Dahl
Beware of the Dog
Roald Dahl
Billy and the Minpins
Roald Dahl
Boy: Tales of Childhood
Roald Dahl
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Roald Dahl
Danny, the Champion of the World
Roald Dahl
Esio Trot
Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr Fox
Roald Dahl
George's Marvelous Medicine
Roald Dahl
Going Solo
Roald Dahl
James And The Giant Peach
Roald Dahl
Lamb To The Slaughter
Roald Dahl
Matilda
Roald Dahl
Skin
Roald Dahl
The BFG
Roald Dahl
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
Roald Dahl, Illustr. Quentin Blake
The Magic Finger
Roald Dahl, Illustr. Quentin Blake
The Twits
Roald Dahl
The Way Up To Heaven
Roald Dahl
The Witches
Roald Dahl