Ray+Bradbury,+The+Veldt

Ray Bradbury's, The Veldt, takes place in a futuristic environment. George, Lydia, and their 2 children, Wendy and Peter live in a home that does everything for them. The family is spoiled by all the different gadgets around the the house that do anything, and everything for them. In the home they have installed a nursery, which is a room with crystallized walls that create a dimensional, superreactionary, supersensative color film and mental tape of a persons thoughts. The nursery also contains odorophonics, and sonics, which make the room come to life. The mother Lydia senses something is wrong with the nursery, and insists that her husband George come take a look. When the enter the nursery they become surrounded by an African Veldt. They notice the lions eating somthing in the distance, but they are not sure what. Lydia hears screams that sound awfully familiar, but George doesn't notice. All of a sudden the lions turn thier gaze on George and Lydia, and start to chase them. Once they escape the room Lydia comes to the conclusion that the nursery is too real and violent for their 10 year old children, and that it needs to be locked up. Lydia says she feels that she doesn't belong, and she can not compete with the African Veldt. Goerge and Lydia decide it's time for a vacation, and time to shut down the house. When they break the news to the children they become hysterical and plead to their parents not to shut down the nursery, but to no sucess. The Hadley's then call upon the help of a psychologist David McClean for assistence in what to do. The psychologist tells them that the nursery doesn't feel right, is bad, and insists that it should be shut down. Later on that night when the Hadley's were in bed they jumped up and ran down to the nursery after they heard screams. When they arrived in the nursery they were surrounded by the African Veldt, and the doors closed behind them. They screamed for their children to let them out, but instead the children refused, and Peter talking to the door said "Don't let them switch off te nursery and the house." The lions surrounded them ready for the kill, and as they sreamed, they finally realized why the screams the heard earlier were familiar, they were their own. At the end the pysochologist came back ready to help the family prepare for their vacation and noticed that the children were sitting in the nursery having a picnic while the lions were feasting upon George and Lydia. He asked the kids where was their mom and dad, and they replied smiling "Oh, they'll be here directly."
 * __Background:__**


 * __Correlation-__**The various themes that appear in this story are alienation, and violence. The character that mostly embodies the idea of alienation is the mother, Lydia. In the beginning of the story Lydia senses something is wrong with the nursery, and she replies by saying to George " It's just that the nursery is different now than it was." The uncomfortable situation made her feel like she did not belong, and couldn't compete with an African Veldt. Also the children experienced alienation when their parents tried to remove the nursery and the house from their lives. When George shut down the house Wendy and Perter became hysterical, cursing their parents, and saying how much they hated them. The psychologist desribed it best when he said "You've let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children's affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents." Their was no connection between the children, and their parents, that is why they became so isolated within the nursery, their new parents. Also there was a lot of violence that surfaced repeatedly. The Veldt itself shows the violence of the lions tearing apart the game they were eating, their terrible yellow-green eyes, and their blood dripping mouths. All this was created by 10 year old kids. When George told his son that he was considering shutting down the house and nursery, Peter replied by saying "I don't think you'd better consider it any more, Father," and his father said "I won't have any threats from my son!" To top all of it off, the most violent part of the story had to be when Wendy and Peter locked their parents in the nursery, only to be eaten by the lions. All this, created, and acted out by 10 year old minds.


 * __Reflection-__** First I had assumed that the setting of The Veldt was way off in the future nowhere near us, but if you look deeper there are a lot of similarities between the story and today. The Happy Life home that the family lives in consists of automatic lighting, air closets, automatic food makers, automatic scrub baths, etc. In our present day lives we have dishwashers, dryers, automatic lighting systems, skype, instant messaging, and a bunch of other automatic machines that do a lot of things for us.As the technology keeps improving around us like nano technology, and everything becoming touchscreen now, we start to look more and more like the Happy Life Home. For example, when the parents are sitting down eating dinner, the children are nowhere in sight, and they televise home telling their parents to stary without them. Many of us today don't sit down and have a family meal together, and we are always preoccupied with something else that does'nt involve our parents. The connections between children and parents are not like they use to be. Since technology has come so far, now we don't really have to connect with people face to face when we have the text-messaging, and video chats. Just as in the story we have all become spoiled with gadgets such as cell phones, tv's, cars, basically anything we could imagine. Technology has made us lazy, and have a lack of purpose to some degree which makes us not much different from Peter and Wendy. All this lets your mind start to wonder, are we starting to become like the Jetsons, and how far away is this technology that we don't have to do anything. I believe we don't know how close it is untill it hits us in the face within the next 50 years.