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Irony
Definition of Mood
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes... read full definition
Mood
Explanation and Analysis:
The mood of “The Veldt” is eerie and unsettling. The story opens with the Hadley parents (George and Lydia) noticing a concerning pattern in their children Wendy and Peter—the pair are using the virtual reality feature in their high-tech nursery to spend time in an African veldt full of vicious lions. As the story goes on, it becomes clear that Wendy and Peter are committed to this virtual reality scene because they want to punish their parents for curtailing their use of technology by training the lions to attack their parents.
George and Lydia are not aware that this is what their children are doing over the course of the story but can sense that something is not right, leading them, once again, to threaten to remove the children’s access to technology. This final threat leads to the horrific end of the story, in which Wendy and Peter lock their parents in the nursery with the lions, dooming them to death.
The final scene—in which the child psychologist Mr. McClean comes to check in with George and Lydia about how the children are doing without access to the nursery's technology—captures the deeply unsettling mood at the end of the story:
At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the shady trees. He squinted at the lions with his hand up to his eyes. Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink. A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean’s hot face. Many shadows flickered. The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky. “A cup of tea?” asked Wendy in the silence.
While Bradbury does not make it explicit that Wendy and Peter have killed their parents, he hints at this eerie conclusion in several ways here. First, he describes “the lions fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence,” implying that they have killed something (or someone) and are now eating it. The description of the vultures’ shadows “flickering” over Mr. McClean’s face also creates an ominous mood, especially since vultures often circle when an animal (or perhaps a human or two) has been killed. Finally, the casual way in which Wendy asks Mr. McClean if he wants a cup of tea suggests that technology has so hardened her emotions that she does not care in the slightest that she is responsible for her parents losing their lives.
Related Themes:
