The Veldt Thematic Essay

​In The Veldt, Ray Bradbury exhibits the literary device of contrasting symbolism of the nursery to develop a theme of technology changing lives in a negative aspect. To begin, during the beginning of the story when the nursery is described, it’s described as, “The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon… Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in the middle of the baked veltland… And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures” (Bradbury). People associate nursery’s with babies and place a positive connotation of a nursery, however in The Veldt; Bradbury adds the negative symbol of the nursery as a veldt full of bloodthirsty lions and scavenging vultures that people normally do not associate with nursery’s. This nursery also symbolizes the kids beginning to lose grip with family and going from a family oriented life, represented by the nursery, to a more violent and animalistic life, represented by the veldt. The symbol of the nursery also signifies the parents beginning to lose their children and it displays how before the nursery was introduced everything was normal and peaceful but the nursery adds suspense and displays how the technology affected them. In

Ray Bradbury written a story about how technology made a perfectly normal family into a completely corrupted family which is called, The Veldt. The Veldt is a science fictional story featuring a nursery that change the appearance in the inside. The family in the house had two kids named Wendy and Peter who were abusing the nursery to the point of having Africa as the basis of the nursery’s appearance. This was until the mother and father of the kids, Lydia and George Hadley tried to stop this from actually happening and the children locked the parents into the nursery to only die after that. The theme of The Veldt is that relying on technology can destroy personal relationships. The tools that are being used is the characters feelings and actions,

“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury is a short story about a husband and wife who buy a “Happylife Home” to do all of their daily chores. It includes a nursery that will respond to whatever a person thinks. In this short story, Bradbury suggests of technology is reaching a point where it is no longer helpful, but harmful. This theme is portrayed through Bradbury’s use of stylistic devices, and character.

In the story, “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, George’s character goes through many changes from the beginning to the end of the story. In the beginning, George is a very careless person that does not pay much attention to his surroundings. He likes his children a lot and believes that they deserve expensive kids. The author writes that, “...it had cost half again as the rest of the house. ‘But nothing’s too good for our children’”

“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury deals with some of the same fundamental problems that we are now encountering in this modern day and age, such as the breakdown of family relationships due to technology. Ray Bradbury is an American writer who lived from 1920 to 2012 (Paradowski). Written in 1950, “The Veldt” is even more relevant to today than it was then. The fundamental issue, as Marcelene Cox said, “Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.” Technology creating dysfunctional families is an ever increasing problem. In the story, the Hadley family lives in a house that is entirely composed of machines. A major

Ray Bradbury uses imagery of where the characters are and what the atmosphere is like to develop that it looks nice, but the parents can't see the potential disadvantages that lie ahead. For example, when the author says, "...presently and African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in

In particular the main part of the Veldt was the nursery. In the story, The nursery is supposed to sound like a crucial part of the children's lives. It was described as the house “which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them” and “The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid”. Bradbury and the characters of the story also talk about the abnormal appearance of Africa. You can see this when they say "because the children have thought about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room's in a rut." they said this because the room is been Africa for a while and they are worried about what the kids are

The nursery is a place where the kids’ imagination can be brought to life through a series of optical illusions and sonics. Usually, Wendy and Peter think about unicorns, fairy tales, or innocent fictional places and creatures. But then when George and Lydia venture into the nursery and nearly get mauled by what’s supposed to be a hologram of a lion, tensions rise between Lydia and George. Lydia wants to shut down the nursery and the house due to her paranoia, while George wants to keep it open because he is almost 100-percent positive that his design is foolproof and no harm would come from it. Later, when the kids come home for dinner, they give off a very eerie vibe; they come in with pinched pink cheeks, bright blue eyes and are holding hands (similar to the horror movie, The Shining). Then the two children act as if they do not even know what Africa is when George brings it up talking about the nursery. Afterward, when Lydia and George are in bed they both have a strange feeling that Wendy changed the nursery - and that Peter completely hacked into the system. When the parents finally break the news to the kids that the nursery and house are getting shut down for a little while, the story takes a dark turn. The kids go into a completel tantrum; begging and pleading to their father to keep

Bradbury shows that the family lives in a high tech house when he writes, “…this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them…” (Bradbury 1) which shows the house does almost anything for this family. The point of this house was for the house to do all the work so that the time that the parents would be working they could spend with their children. However, everything changed when the mother said, “Maybe I don’t have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don’t we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?”(Bradbury 4) which shows that the mother was getting overwhelmed and feeling like she was completely useless. Once the mother feels this way the parents decide to shut down the nursery which causes chaos between them and their children when they say, “They screamed and pranced and threw things. They yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture...” (Bradbury 13) which shows that the family has actually been torn apart because of house/veldt.

“We’ve given our children everything that they have wanted. Is this our reward-- secrecy and disobedience?”(Bradbury). In the futuristic short story, “The Veldt,” written by the the well-know author, Ray Bradbury, two parents, George and Lydia have purchased a house with artificial intelligence; as a result, it has done everything for them and their kids, Peter and Wendy. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is known as any work brought forth by technology-- including machines, computers, etc.— and is becoming more relied on by the human race. According to Or Shani, the CEO of Adgorithms— the first company to develop and use AI for marketing— dates signs of AI back to Ancient Greece; however, for a long period of time, it was overlooked and not valued much (Shani). As we

In the story The Veldt, Ray Bradbury uses vivid imagery to transport the reader to a lush African veldt and describe it in rich detail. This imagery describes the characters in the story as well as it does the locations. Listening to The Veldt, your imagination crafts a picture of the characters and their home. Other readers may argue that this story has a different meaning. There are many ways to interpret why Ray Bradbury has used crafts to enrich his writing. However, there is only true reason that the author has used these crafts to communicate the writing’s true meaning. This reason is to provide a more realistic story to his readers. And by using this imagery, he is able to create a detailed image in each reader’s mind of the story, its characters, and, most importantly, the settings.

“The Veldt” is a short story written by Ray Bradbury concerned somehow the family has trouble getting along with each other and the breakdown of family relationships due to technology. In the story, the Hadley family (George, Lydia and their two children) live in a house that are filled with machines and a major facet of the house is the nursery where is able to connect with the children’s imaginations to reproduce. Laziness and Technology can break up families are the main theme that Ray Bradbury develops.

The Hadleys live in the advanced housing unit called the “Happylife” home, which does everything someone would do on a day-to-day basis for them. The populace of the world could agree that something could go right or wrong with using that kind of technology. The Hadley children have a nursery that shows images based on their thoughts, therefore the African veldt appears in the room.

This modern society has, without a doubt, adapted to technology; which makes it difficult to visualise life with anything technological. This significantly influences children in a negative impact, seeing as technology takes up of all

Another source of the overdependence of technology in children is school. At school, they are introduced to technology at a very young age, sometimes even in preschool. Children are introduced to calculators at a very young age, helping them with math problems they should be able to do in their heads. The teachers are encouraging it so the students don’t take the time to learn how to do it out and then struggle when they have no calculator. Also, children today are proven to have much worse handwriting than in the past. They are now expected to type English essays and in elementary school; many aren’t taught cursive but rather how to use computers. For example, in 2009, 97 percent of teachers had at least one computer in their room, and out of that, 93 percent of the computers were connected to the Internet (Gray, Thomas, Lewis). Intelligence is continuously decreasing due to all of the shortcuts children now are able to take advantage of. In some aspects, the advancements are really aiding students. They have almost any information they can imagine wherever they go, just by going to Google. Typing is neat and