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Definition of Tone
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical, and so on. For instance... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical... read full definition
Tone
Explanation and Analysis:
The tone of “The Veldt” is a cautionary one. Bradbury wrote this story in 1950 as a sort of warning to readers about what consumer culture and technology could lead to: a loss of purpose or meaning in one’s life and the death of the family (as children seek connection and entertainment through technology rather than from their parents).
This cautionary tone comes across the clearest at the end of the story—after the children have sicced virtual reality lions on their parents to kill them—but Bradbury sows the seeds of concern throughout the story by having the narrator channel George’s worries about the effects of raising his children in the Happylife Home, as in the following passage:
Perhaps Lydia was right. Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children. It was all right to exercise one’s mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind settled on one pattern …? It seemed that, at a distance, for the past month, he had heard lions roaring, and smelled their strong odor seeping as far away as his study door. But, being busy, he had paid it no attention.
George thinks to himself about how his family may need “a little vacation from the fantasy” that the Happylife Home provides them, given the ways that Wendy and Peter have, for an entire month, become fixated on turning their virtual reality nursery into an African veldt. His concerns about the veldt—and, in particular, the “roaring” lions contained therein—end up proving to be justified when the children lock him and Lydia in the room with the lions, dooming them to death.
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