Examine the ways in which Dahl achieves his twist in the tale. How are these truly ‘Tales of the Unexpected’?

In his book the Tales of the Unexpected Roald Dahl uses twist in the tale to keep his stories enjoyable and engaging. He unexpectedly twists the storyline at the end of each tale. He manages to do this effectively because the endings are not predictable. By not sharing much information about the characters personality, the readers cannot guess easily what will occur. When the twist finally comes you are not only surprised at what happens but about the characters themselves and there personalities. Roald Dahl is the master of the twist in the tale; he delivers believable stories that reviles many disturbing and sinister aspects of human nature. In the story Lamb to the Slaughter, the wife kills her unfaithful husband. The story narrates a couples afternoon, the tension is slowly built up, until finally what at first seemed a kind and warm wife becomes a murderer. By building up tension the reader is kept interested in the story long enough to reach the end. This technique is very useful, as the tension rises there is a sense that something wrong. Because many possible endings have already crossed the readers mind when the twist in the tale occurs it is a lot more surprising. Again the characters are not vary elaborate, and a lot about there personality is not described. He only reviles the true personality of the characters at the end of the story. Another thing that makes the twist in the stories successful is characters with double personalities. Most of them have suspicious, rather cynical intensions that are not picked up by the other people in the story. For example in Skin, a story about a man how got tattooed on his back my an old friend that later became a famous artist. In return for his body art, he is offered a life of luxury in a hotel where he would have too let all the guests see the beautiful tattoo in his back. The main characters first reaction is shock of such generosity, the man seems like a vary good person, but in reality he is a horrible person that cuts the back of the man and cells it for money. Double personalities can also seen in the story Royal Jelly, the man that throughout the story seems to be a good husband and a caring father is actually is a crazy. The reader discovers that he has been secretly feeding himself and his family Royal Jelly a strange substance crated by bees too feed. The Dip in the Pool is a clear example of how unexpected the stories can be. A man is in a cruse ship and he makes a bet that the boat will arrive to port at a certain amount of time. When he realizes that he is going too loose the bet, he decides to jump out of the boat and have it stop to rescue him to buy some time.
Before he jumps he picks out an old lady that will cry for help, after talking with her he is confident that it is a lovely old woman that would help him. But when he jumps the woman turns out to be completely crazy. The reader has no idea that the lady is a crazy, ergo the twist in the tale is vary shocking and leaves space for a own interpretation of what will happen after the story ends.
The Tales of the unexpected stand true to their name, every story is different, each twist in the tale gets more and more strange from one story to the other. Probably what makes the twist in the tale efficient and succesfull is that there is a lot of mystery. By the end of the story there is a lot the reader doesn’t know, and has to fill in the blanks with his own imagination. A good story is a story that makes you think, and Dahls endings leave you thinking, wondering what was the back story behind certain characters or what would have happened if. In conclusion I think that Dahl manages to smoothly execute twist in the tale by using four different techniques. First he crates vary brief descriptions about the character which leaves a lot of room for surprise at the end. Secondly many of his characters have double personalities or intensions, that usually have too do with money or revenge. Thirdly the stories are not predictable, even though the book is called the Tales of the Unexpected and the reader knows something is going to change at the end, what it is going too be is difficult to predict. Lastly the mystery, the story is not completed and it leaves the reader thinking about the different possibilities. Roald Dahls stories are like no other, and his tales are truly the tales of the unexpected.