Slowly Disconnecting Relationships In Ray Bradbury's 'The Veldt'

Slowly Disconnecting

With every technology related innovation, we get lost; and so does our connection with reality. As a result of this disconnection, our behavior changes. The people closest to us are in our lives, but no longer part of it. Families no longer interact during dinner, or take part in family activities. They are constantly on their devices; cell phones, iPads, laptops. If there is any interaction, the topic involves social media. Ray Bradbury the author of “The Veldt” took notice of technologies adverse effects when this short story was written in the 1950’s, and responded with a fairly accurate depiction of how technology affects relationships. Bradbury uses the lack of family interaction to show how technology causes a disconnect

Technology is an abundant part of the Handley’s lives. Instead of the parents clothing the kids and spending time with them, they have their house to replace this position. This extreme amount of technology causes the family to drift apart. The parents begin to feel unnecessary because they cannot “scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can” (157), and as a result they do not function like an ideal household. All of the activities that the Handley children’s parents should be involved in, they are no longer needed for. The parents and children spend minimal time together because the technology replaced the parents position in the children's

Having dinner together is a crucial part of maintaining a family connection, but “at dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a plastic carnival across town and had televised home that they would be late, to go ahead eating” (158). Without the device to televise home they would have had to come home to tell their parents they wanted to stay out longer. When technology is a factor, they have the ability to communicate without having to interact directly, so they can avoid the actual interaction. The avoidance of interaction causes the children and their parents to become detached, ultimately spending most of their time away from each