The Veldt Essay

1044 Words5 Pages

Technology has both benefits and drawbacks. Humankind has created a device that can be smarter than the creators. This may be especially useful, but the consequences of having something with so much power can cause harm. In the short story “The Veldt,” by Ray Bradbury, he warns that technology has corrupted human relationships, lives, and even mindsets. The family described in “The Veldt” has infused their lives with technology, causing them to depend on it rather than each other, especially the children. Bradbury's warning is that the world is becoming increasingly corrupt with advancing technology. Technology obliterates a family's social relationship when overused. In “The Veldt,” Bradbury creates a futuristic technology filled home occupied …show more content…

Ray Bradbury warns that with overuse of technology in children, it can cause negative affects to their mind states. Lidia asks to lock up the nursery because of the violent scenario it is projecting, and George disagrees with the idea and says, “You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours — the tantrum he threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery” (Bradbury). The children have grown dangerously attached to technology and involved their minds in the possibilities it has to offer. When George agrees to cut off the technology, he states, “Too much of anything isn’t good for anyone” (Bradbury). Bradbury is warning that overusing technology can cause issues for a person's wellbeing. When talking to his father about him cutting off technology, Peter warns his father by saying, “I don’t think you’d better consider it anymore father” (Bradbury). The child’s attachment to technology has caused them to be hostile and aggressive towards their parents. The children would do anything to protect the technology filled home rather than their parents. This shows how technology has affected their mental states. He threatens his father not to turn it off, demonstrating his aggression. When the parents fail to take the technology away from the children, this "leads to not only devastating effects on the children's development but also initiates a string of events that …show more content…

The house that Ray Bradbury envisions for the Veldt allows the family to live their life without having to complete any simple tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and dressing themselves. Lidia expresses how she feels worthless and unneeded being surrounded by technology. When talking about the house with her husband she says, “That’s just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid” (Bradbury). This exemplifies how technology has replaced routine tasks and reduced our sense of purpose in life. Bradbury explains that by evolving technology the parents have no connection with their children “because they ‘never lifted a hand’ in contributing to their development, the children are ‘insufferable’” (Caldwell). The parents allowed technology to parent their children making them incapable of knowing how to parent them outside of basic commands. Ray Bradbury expresses that technology is like “empty gloves into which a hand … can be inserted” (Butler). Bradbury expresses in his other book Fahrenheit 451 that it is “’always the hand of man,’ which ‘can be good or evil, while the gloves themselves remain amoral’” (qtd. in Butler). In many cases Bradbury warns that technology even when used out of good intentions will only will always cause harm. By exterminating technology from their life, the parents and children would have been much happier and would have been

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