The Umbrella Man

The mother and daughter learn they have both been deceived about the little old man with the umbrella. The man's deception of the woman is rather cleverly accomplished: He tells the narrator's...

The whole story is told from the point of view of the narrator, who is a twelve-year-old girl. This "minor character as narrator" technique enables the author to describe both the mother and the...

The setting of Roald Dahl's short story "The Umbrella Man" is the city of London. The narrator, a 12-year-old girl, explains that she was there with her mother to see the dentist. Yesterday...

I assume your question refers to "The Umbrella Man" by Roald Dahl and so I have edited the question accordingly. This excellent short story focuses on one old man and how he manages to keep himself...

In “The Umbrella Man,” the narrator—a twelve-year-old girl—and her mother make a trip into England’s capital city. My mother took me up to London to see the dentist. He found one hole. It was in a...

You need to consider the way that the mother is presented through what she says and does. In this excellent short story she is initially suspicious of the old man, being distrustful of strange men....

I can understand why the Umbrella Man behaves the way he does, but I cannot condone it. After all, he isn't stealing umbrellas because he is hungry. He spends his ill-gotten gains on triple shots...

When it comes to strange men, the narrator's mother has a golden rule: the nicer a man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become. As the umbrella man does indeed seem very nice, she is...

I am guessing that your question refers to Roald Dahl's short story "The Umbrella Man," although you did not specify it in your question. The old man goes into The Red Lion pub and buys a triple...

Initially, the old gentleman with the umbrella makes a particularly positive impression on our narrator in Roald Dahl’s short story. She describes the old man in flattering terms, referring to the...

Dahl seems to have an amazing gift for incorporating black humour and irony into his fiction to produce tales, that although are supposedly aimed at teenagers, equally appeal to adult...

To a great extent, the characters of "The Umbrella Man" are introduced with a touch of humor, setting the tone for the short story. The daughter, who is the narrator of the short story, proves to...

Although this story starts with a trip to the dentist, most of the story has nothing to do with our narrator's experience in the chair. It can be assumed that the reason this bit of background is...

At the beginning of the story, the narrator's mother insists on taking a cab, or taxi, to get back home. It is raining heavily, and the daughter wants to go back into the cafe and wait for the rain...

At the beginning of the story the stranger approaches the narrator's mother and asks for a "small favour." The narrator describes her mother's initial reaction to the stranger as "very cool and...

In this short story an old man stops a mother and child outside a café, and he asks the mother to buy an umbrella from him for just £1.oo. The umbrella is worth much more than this. In fact, the...

In “The Umbrella Man,” the narrator (a twelve-year-old girl) and her mother encounter an elderly man who pretends to be feeble in order to gain their sympathy, sell the mother stolen goods, and use...

I would add that the mother is urbane. She doesn't live in London but must live in a nearby suburb. She is only suspicious because she has seen too much of people in the big city. Like any other...