The Veldt Essay

1064 Words3 Pages

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction.” Albert Einstein’s fear comes true in the short story named “The Veldt,” written by Ray Bradbury. The universal theme of this short story is that parental neglect and technology can have adverse effects on children. The story opens up with the Hadleys being concerned about a projection of an African veldt in the Nursery, a mechanized room that reflects mental images of anyone in it. This leads to them reflecting on their use of technology. They call the psychologist to look at the room and he suggests an overall shut down of the entire mechanized house. The two children Peter and Wendy kill the parents to keep the house running because of their addiction to using the house’s …show more content…

When the psychologist visits the Hadleys to check on their Nursery, he tells George Hadley, “You’ve let this room replace you and your wife in your children’s affections George. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there’s hatred here. You can feel it coming out of the sky”(Bradbury). The psychologist David McClean points out how the Hadley adults have neglected their children, and basically handed over parental duties to the nursery, leading it to have an enormous value in the children’s eyes. In addition, an article written on the short story stated, “This accidental abdication of parental responsibility sets the children up to become emotionally attached to the nursery. Then, when George threatens to turn off the nursery, the children are terrified because now they are going to be abandoned by their new, surrogate parent, the nursery”(Milne). The nursery is compared to a parent and holds this value in the children’s eyes. It is so essential to their lives that they feel that they cannot live without it. Since the nursery pushed the parents out of the children’s love, it is foreshadowed that the children do not care about the parents in the slightest, and are even desperate to keep the nursery, therefore will not have any qualms in harming

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