Review One: The Veldt - Ray Bradbury

Click this link to read "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury

The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury, presents a terrifying look at a future where children are monitored by machines. In short, The Veldt is a short story in which Houses are fully automated, performing the simplest of everyday tasks. The Veldt focuses on the automated nursery, where children can use their minds to project interactive images on the walls. The story uses the Hadley family as an example where this room causes the children to go awry.

In summary, the Hadley children have been raised by the interactive nursery for 10 years, and, in theory, consider it more of a parent than their biological parents could ever be. The parents, while in reality are very lenient, are considered to be too strict (For example, they don't allow their 10 year - old children to take a rocket ship to New York by themselves because they are too young). The children spend all of their spare time playing in the high tech nursery.


The nursery is able to read the childrens' minds and projects their desires on to the walls and onto 3D holograms. However, the parents become concerned when the children continue to conjure images of an African Veldt, or a jungle/desert. The images progress to become more realistic and more violent. Eventually the parents are tricked into the room and are eaten by virtual lions.

The text focuses on the issue of raising kids through technology. Society is coming closer to this reality all the time. As a child, I had a lesser grip on reality because I played video games. It gave a distraction to the isolated life I was semi-forced to lead. From personal experience, I was able to distinguish from real life and fiction. However, I was able to immerse myself in technology and imagine it was happening to me. If technology, like that of The Veldt, was completely engrossing and realistic, it would confuse and change any child to disconnect from society.

The purpose of this work is to warn parents about the dangers of over-exposure to technology. It's like putting your child through multiple CT-scans, but instead of cancer, they get various anti-social tendecies. Bradbury builds up and emphasizes the climax of the story to create an unsettling effect.

This depiction of the future reveals our unsettling dependence on technology. Seriously, the foundation of a year long project involves blogging. Just a few years ago, they would have called us crazy for even considering that a blog could be used for educational purposes. Now look at this.

Ray Bradbury was totally right.