The Veldt Summary & Analysis

The first few lines establish the setting as a technological future of plenty, centered around an easeful domesticity in which the family literally doesn’t have to do any work of their own. At the same time, the branded “Happylife Home” suggests the consumerism behind this seeming paradise and the mention of the need for a psychologist suggests all actually isn’t as wonderful as it seems. “Taking a look” at the “nursery” uses language that makes the nursery sound like a car or machine, and makes it clear that even child-rearing in this world has been “outsourced” to technology.

The narrator points out how expensive the nursery is in order to illustrate the extent to which George and Lydia have spoiled their children. But our expectations of what a nursery should look like are totally upended by the frightening veldt that it actually presents. That this veldt reality appears “too real” establishes the allure of manufactured reality, how it can be more stimulating than actual reality. Meanwhile, it’s interesting that the scene the children have created is one of primeval nature, rather than a cartoonish fantasy. The screams will grow in importance as the story continues.

George’s amazement at the nursery’s virtual reality attests to this room’s status as the peak of human power and technology. Bradbury’s description of the nursery—“what fun for everyone”—resembles an advertisement for a theme park or movie. The fact that the nursery sometimes feels a little too real again references the overstimulation of mass entertainment – for Bradbury the nursery represents a logical extension of television. Here, Lydia feels the line between reality and virtual reality beginning to blur.

The Hadley parents’ unhappiness isn’t caused by the fact that they are working too hard—rather, it’s that they have nothing to do. The Happylife Home has taken over all of their daily tasks, such that they no longer feel useful and necessary in their own home. Lydia’s desire to cook and clean once again suggests the idea that machines that fulfill our every whim do not create true happiness. The Home has taken away the Hadleys’ sense of purpose: they want to feel like they belong in the world, and in order to belong in the world they must feel like they matter, which requires that there be work that they have to do.

George’s reflection that the children have been spending too much time in the nursery raises the notion that Wendy and Peter might be addicted to their technology. And in this case, George recognizes that the nursery is especially dangerous because it gives the children so much power with so little responsibility. He realizes that the veldt is an expression of his children’s darkest thoughts. George understands that it is natural for children to wish death or destruction on others, before they even know the consequences of such a wish, but fears that Wendy and Peter, by playing out their thoughts of death in the nursery, might reinforce this natural predisposition in a way that leads toward actual violence. The lion’s roar and the subsequent scream seem at the moment to indicate that his concerns are accurate (later it will be revealed that his concerns are accurate but also have come too late).

The children’s transition from scenes of Aladdin to the African veldt signals a loss of innocence, a loss that is perhaps brought about more quickly by their addiction to the nursery and the responsibility-less power it gives them. Furthermore, George’s inability to change the walls of the nursery implies that the situation is slipping beyond his control. The open door that captures Lydia “like a framed picture” is a crucial image. It gives us a view of reality from the perspective of virtual reality. Bradbury describes the view using words that imply artifice: reality is presented in the same way as a painting or a movie. This further blurs the lines between reality and the nursery’s “artificial reality”, and suggests that reality depends on where you stand. The image also presents a neat juxtaposition between a human eating and of the lions feeding, another commentary on the fundamental animal-ness or savageness of human instincts and desires.

The Hadley children are shameless in their manipulation of their parents. At the same time, Bradbury’s description of them makes them appear almost robotic. All of their actions and utterances are described in unison: one can imagine them speaking together in a flat, emotionless voice. The Hadley’s appear to live perfect lives in their Happylife Home, but in truth the parents feel useless, while the children are un-feeling. The bloody wallet is another hint of what the children have been up to – a hint George seems to at least partly understand when he locks the nursery door.

George and Lydia’s assessment of their children is essentially accurate; but, at the same time, the parents don’t recognize the extent of the issue. The fact that Wendy and Peter have so easily broken back into the nursery, and that George and Lydia don’t even try to do anything about it, demonstrates how little power the parents actually have over their children. George and Lydia’s rocking beds further infantilize them—they are like babies in a cradle. Meanwhile, the vaguely familiar screams produced by the nursery’s technology establish a haunting tone, which George and Lydia’s technological infantilization helps them ignore. Technology within the story is both the problem and the cure, which might be the definition of any addiction.

The fact that Peter does not look at his father illustrates how estranged the children are from their parents, and from human interaction in general. Peter does not seem to feel any kind of love or care for his father; he goes so far as to threaten George’s life. Peter’s wish to do nothing except “look and listen and smell” demonstrates once again how the Happylife Home has reduced the Hadley family to beings who are both passive consumers of entertainment and animal-like in their interests. The overstimulation of the nursery has made Peter care only about continuing to stimulate his senses (look, listen, smell). He doesn’t want to think, love, share; he wants to interact with the technology that gives him instant gratification, not with other people.

David McClean’s assertion that psychologists work based on feeling contrasts with the unfeeling nature of the two Hadley children and suggests Bradbury’s fear that technology robs humans of feeling and empathy, of what makes people human. McClean’s description of the family’s dynamics paints the Happylife Home as being even better than having parents in the sense that eating donuts all day is even better than having healthy food: the Happylife Home gives the children whatever they want and will never say no. The original usage of the nursery to study the human mind reinforces the idea that the veldt the children have produces is a true reflection of human nature. It also implies that this technology could have productive and revolutionary applications, but that in a consumerist culture, it merely becomes an addictive form of entertainment.

That Bradbury describes the Happylife Home as a “cemetery” after George turns it off suggests that the Happylife Home, when it was on, had a life of its own. The interaction between Peter and George highlights the familial conflict created by the intense technology of the house, a conflict that actually presents opposite sides of the same coin: Peter chooses technology over his father, while George finds the technology deadening because it steals from him his purpose, his fatherhood. That George then lets his children use the nursery one last time indicates that he doesn’t think that Peter actually means he wants George dead. He thinks, rather, that his son is metaphorically expressing his deep anger. He doesn’t understand the depth of his son’s estrangement from the family and from other people.

The “genius” of the Happylife Home has so completely eclipsed George and Lydia’s roles as parents that it has destroyed the Hadley family: the children have no family feeling at all for their parents, or for people in general. Wendy and Peter, without any remorse, murder their parents in the nursery. In the process, virtual reality becomes full-on reality, which seems like just a final step since, to Wendy and Peter, the nursery is much more real and exciting than reality itself. The children renounce reality—and their parents—in favor of technology. This outcome also speaks to the insidiousness of technology: George and Lydia were worrying about what technology was doing to their children, not realizing what it had already done.

The heat of the veldt, which reflects the savageness of human nature, contrasts starkly with the civilized tea that Wendy and Peter enjoy in the glade. The end of this story signals the end of a generation and the birth of a new one: a generation in which selfishness, cruelty, and a lack of emotion (induced by excessive technology) supplant the love, care, and understanding that are crucial to our shared humanity. Though they appear civilized, Wendy and Peter are just two more savage animals in the technology-enabled veldt.