“ knows them better than their closest friends” sounds pathetically proud, and the tone emphasizes the woman’s possessiveness. A touch of despair and paranoia is added and casts the heroine in a more frantic and humanistic light. From stanza four to five, the pace accelerates due to shortened sentence fragments. Then, in the second stanza, the poet somehow ridicules the landlady by placing her ears under the magnifying glass to emphasize her disappointment. For example, the first stanza seems like a silent film, imposing a creepy ambience upon the audience, overwhelming them with the hunger for control and supreme knowledge of the landlady suffocating the air. Such diction fools the audience and landlady alike into thinking that she possesses first-hand knowledge of each and every detail of the boarders’ lives yet it also underlines the pettiness of all the stuff, and raises doubt on whether it is possible for one to know all about another being simply by piling together all the tidbits that represent parts of the person’s life.ĭiction and enjambment aside, the tones fluctuate a lot between stanzas as well. In the sixth stanza, the narrator adopts asyndeton to list the personal objects of the landlady’s victims. Her moods and whims are controlled by their every action. From an omniscient and omnipresent observer of her tenants and a vicious bloodsucker or, she has turned into a nervous and pathetic leech who depends on the knowledge of things that happen to others. The next stanza juxtaposes the landlady’s mentality with the actions of her lodgers: she “jumps when they move,” and trembles from the pressing need to know what they are thinking about.
![dreams of desire landlady dreams of desire landlady](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Jhzr_PhxMDk/hqdefault.jpg)
Lines 14-16 all begin with a charged active verb that depicts the thrill of peeping, the urge to finger the artifacts of the lives of others, the satisfaction of piecing together others’ lifestyle, and the irritation of unpredicted moves. In later stanzas, the diction adds to the complexity of the landlady. The contrast here suggests that it is the landlady’s abnormal behavior that impels the boarders to keep their distance. In the third stanza, the enjambment “they hold the walls /about them as they weep or laugh” underscores the boarders’ relentless efforts to avoid the landlady, while another run-on sentence “she peers /stippled with curious flesh” indicates her nonstop curiosity to spy on others’ life.
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The poet even singled out the landlady’s flesh in Line 13, presenting her as composed of multiple curious parts instead of a holistic being. In fact, the narrator describes the movement of the landlady’s ears- “advance and fall back stunned-” which seem more like those of an attentive animal that is greatly disappointed by her smart prey. They are indeed like clever mice always escaping the paw of a giant cat by inches.
![dreams of desire landlady dreams of desire landlady](https://static.f95zone.to/data/avatars/h/7/7808.jpg)
In the second stanza, she elaborates on the boarders’ meditated designs to protect themselves from the landlady’s eyes. The contrast between her craving for attention and others’ deliberate avoidance of her underlines the unhealthy relationship about to unfold in the following stanza. “Click doors like shutters” (Line 4) introduces a reaction to her probing glance and “craving silence.” Such attentive watch borders on crime, and is sure to elicit a protective and fearful response. Moreover, it sheds light on the reason behind the boarders’ apathy towards her. For example, “camera eye” (Line 4) gives a sense of her eyes following the lodgers all around like a camera, capturing intimate and otherwise secretive moments. The narrator draws attention to individual parts of the landlady’s body, thus giving her a mechanical air and emphasizing her inhumane side as an inspector. It also implies that the air is tainted, foreshadowing the abnormal and unhealthy relationship between the landlady and her tenants. The visual imagery of “sepia air” (Line 1) conveys a mystic and suspenseful sense. Page employs vivid imagery, careful diction, and tonal shifts to convey the complexity of this nightmare come to life: villain and victim, an excluded stalker trying to assimilate herself into the surrounding community, a pitiful yet pathetic woman craving love. But sometimes, this inquisitiveness turns into obsession, and challenges the limits of morality. In reality, there are people who pry into the lives of others for the sake of mere curiosity.
![dreams of desire landlady dreams of desire landlady](https://assets.cambridge.org/97810090/45483/large_cover/9781009045483i.jpg)
“Big Brother is watching you” has haunted the dreams of millions since it first appeared as a slogan in the phenomenal 1984.