Previous
Symbols
The Happylife Home symbolizes a new consumerist society in which all of our needs and desires are instantly met, and all of our daily tasks become automated. It simultaneously frees the Hadleys to do whatever they want, and renders them passive beings, dependent on its technology and unsure of what to do now that they don’t have to do anything. In some ways, the Happylife Home becomes even more human than the humans that live within it, because it performs all of the tasks that make us human. It therefore represents the loss of independence and a sense of purpose in life, and signals our misconception of what a happy life means.
The Happylife Home Quotes in The Veldt
The The Veldt quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Happylife Home. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Veldt
Quotes
They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Maybe I don’t have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don’t we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?”
“You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?”
“Yes.” She nodded….
“But I thought that’s why we bought the house, so we wouldn’t have to do anything.”
“That’s just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Matter of fact, we’re thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence.”
“That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?”
“It would be fun for a change, don’t you think?”
“No, it would be horrid….”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“You’ve let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children’s affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important than their real parents. And now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there’s hatred there. You can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you’ll have to change your life. Like too many others, you’ve built it around creature comforts. Why, you’d starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your kitchen. You wouldn’t know how to tap an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything off. Start new.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Lydia, it’s off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of here and now. The more I see of the mess we’ve put ourselves in, the more it sickens me. We’ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical cemetery. So silent. None of the humming energy of machines waiting to function at the tap of a button.
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“I wish you were dead!”
“We were, for a long while. Now we’re going to really start living. Instead of being handled and massaged, we’re going to live.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Veldt LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Happylife Home Symbol Timeline in The Veldt
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Happylife Home appears in The Veldt. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Veldt
...opens during a conversation between the Hadley parents, George and Lydia, in their thirty thousand-dollar Happylife Home . The futuristic Happylife Home fulfills their every need: it clothes them, feeds them, and...
(full context)
The parents reach the nursery, the most expensive and sophisticated feature of the Happylife Home . Before their eyes, the blank walls of the nursery transform into a three-dimensional African...
(full context)
...to do, and is therefore thinking too much. She suggests that they shut off the Happylife Home and take a vacation. She expresses the desire to do routine human tasks that the...
(full context)
...turn off the nursery. When George reveals that he and Lydia are considering turning the Happylife Home off for a month, Peter becomes upset at the idea of tying his own shoes...
(full context)
...from a “Santa Claus” into a “Scrooge.” First he spoiled the children by purchasing the Happylife Home ; then he allowed them to become dependent on it. Now, he is functionally taking...
(full context)
...and proceeds to go around the house turning off the other automated elements of the Happylife Home . The house becomes as silent as a cemetery. Peter, desperate, tells George that he...
(full context)
