Comparing 'The Veldt And Critical Acclaim'

Choices are made everyday, by everyone. Some are good choices, some are bad. However, you don’t just make them out of thin air. Something drives you to make them, whether that be friends or something else controlling the choice/decision you make. Ray Bradbury utilizes this nature in his short story, “The Veldt”, where something always drove the characters to make choices, whether that be to murder one’s parents, or to buy a house that was capable of doing so. However, this text isn’t the only one utilizing this nature. In Avenged Sevenfold’s song “Critical Acclaim”, it talks about what drives/creates the choices/decisions of American citizens and politicians, which has a relation to “The Veldt”. Throughout both texts, the nature used reveals

In “The Veldt”, decisions made upon greed and foolishness run rampant. One of those was during the climax of the story, where the children killed their parents. Why would they do this, however? They made this decision because of greed. They desperately wanted the nursery to consume their lives, and they made it happen. Since they had no one to stop them from using the nursery, they had it all to themselves. They had all that they wanted. A decision made from foolishness in “The Veldt” was one by the parents. They made a decision to keep the nursery going, despite nearly being killed by lions (this happened earlier in the text). Ultimately, this decision led to their demise. In “Critical Acclaim”, one of the quotes from the song is “Selfish agenda once again… Right this way, you’ve dug your own grave.” This shows the common theme because the quote talks about how the decisions (actions) made upon greed/selfishness (which Avenged Sevenfold sings about a lot in the song) leads people in this country to their “demise”, or more or less downfall. The selfish and greedy decisions of some American citizens leads to the downfall of others and even the ones who display those traits. We can see this often, in things such as protests, where people get beat up because they don’t stand for what others want. Both of these texts encompasses the theme that you shouldn’t let greed and