How Is Technology Used In The Veldt By Ray Bradbury

Scientists, doctors, psychologists, and many others believe that technology has become a major distraction and danger to many, if not all, people. This can be seen in the story “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury where the highly advanced technology becomes the children’s soul focus and importance causing them to lose sight of what really matters. In “The Veldt,” George and Lydia, the parents of Wendy and Peter, become concerned when the nursery, a technologically advanced room, continues to play a scene of lions killing their prey. While the nursery was meant to be a helpful tool for the children, it turned into a way for the kids to channel negative thoughts. This prompts George and Lydia to contemplate whether or not to shut down the nursery.

When Lydia tells George the nursery is not normal, his first instinct is to check out the nursery for any obvious signs of abnormal activity. As soon as George steps into the room begins to transform, “Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun” (Bradbury). By explaining each aspect of the nursery creating a scene of a veldt, Bradbury helps the reader imagine how the nursery would change from a room to what seemed like an actual African savannah, even down to the smallest detail. Though the nursery was only meant to be a room that provided a realistic, yet virtual, representation of scenes for its users, it became much more real and even dangerous. “And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths” (Bradbury). Around this part is when Lydia and George somewhat realize that the nursery has become much more than just a virtual reality room. They realize that Wendy and Peter’s once fun fantasy has become a now alarming reality. The highly advanced technology possessed by the Hadley family quickly becomes a danger to