Technology has alwaysremained outstanding among other things that have happened to mankind. Humansare surrounded by the technology and so reliant on one in their day to daylife. However, it has both pros and cons, creating the wide impact on the humanrace.
Several stories play differently showing how terrifying technology canbe! In “The Veldt”, Ray Bradbury tries to make a point that if humans would usetechnology without any limitation it could destroy their whole life. People aregetting more and more addicted to the technology that they don’t care aboutanybody. In “The Veldt” there is a setting of Happlylife Home and Nursery thatruin the fundamental lifestyle of family, the setting has become more importantin the children’s lives, and parents lost their life due to African veldt whichis the major section of the story.The Happylife Home which costHadley family thirty thousand dollars was destroying the simple way oflifestyle that the family once lived before.
“The cutting-edge technology in HappylifeHome satisfies each need of Hadley’s family: it garments them, sustains them,gives a bath to them, plays and sings with them, even rocked them to sleep” (98). But Lydia and George were unaware of the rivalry of their children due toan ascendancy of the Happylife Home over them. Once, George tells Peter aboutturning off the house for about a month because his fantasy was growing bit tooreal as a result Peter got scared that now who would do his daily work.
At onepoint, George had turn off most of the machines of the Happy House due to thatPeter got angry and yelled at his father that, “I wish you were dead!” (108),by this Bradbury wants to demonstrate that technology is ruling over parents.Lydia Hadley was feeling thatHappylife Home was beyond her in the family as it has taken her place of wife,mother, and nursemaid. For example, Lydia can’t offer shower to kids asproficient as the programmed scrub bath and she can’t make great dinner likethe automatic dining-room. Children’s were spending their time in specialplastic carnival rather than passing quality time with their parents. Georgeand Lydia found that their children were spending too much of time in thenursery and imagining about lions, killing, hunting and death in the African veldtfor that thought they were too young, which is a perfect example of a negativeeffect of using too much of technology.
The house is providing all the thingsthat children need in their daily life, so they don’t need the help of theirparents anymore. The nursery has become the mom and dad in the children’slives, more vital in their life than their genuine parents. So, the technologywhich is setting in this story is dominating the need of the parents whichresult in breaking the bond between parents and children.Excess of everything is badthat is well described. The veldt shows the excessive use of technology. TheHappylife Home is from one of the negative sides of technology. At the initialstage, it is comparable to the amusement park for Hadley’s children.Afterwards, it turned out to be a mammoth problem against the parents.
Lydiawas very afraid of the atmosphere of the nursery from the beginning of thestory when she saw the death battle between the animals in African veldt. Shetold all the story to Mclean and also showed him the situation of the nursery.Mclean understood the situation of nursery and advised George to closed nurseryas soon as possible because the real use of nursery was to help children but ithas moved toward the channel to destructive aspiration and also suggested toclosed all the system and go for a picnic with his family. Also added that allsituation was happened because of the overuse of technology. After that Georgebecame angry and turn off most of the machines like shoe polisher, shoe lacer,body scrubber, massagers of Happylife Home in front of their children. Itcreated the negative impact on his children mind because setting was like theirsfamily. George was going to turn off the nursery but the children begged for alast moment with Nursery.
Lydia also agree with the children and give them lastfew minutes with Nursery. But when George was just going to change the clothesand tell Lydia to take children to Nursery for few minutes. Then Lydia alsomove to change clothes. Then parents realized that this sound was coming fromnursery and they rushed into the nursery for the search for their children. Butparents were not able to find their children.
Lastly, System closed the doorand parents could not open the door because System was controlled by thechildren and lions from African veldt killed them. After some time, David Mcleanarrived and tried to find George and Lydia but not able to find them. ThenMclean entered the nursery and saw that Peter and Wendy were drinking tea intotheir virtual world that they want to stay before. These things show that theyare overly connected with technology and gave more importance to their virtuallife than their parents. In conclusion, the story of “TheVeldt” is moving around the importance of technology in children’s daily lives,demolish central way of life of family and how it became the reason of thedeath of their parents. Looking at the demerits, the demerits outweigh themerits.
The moral of the story is thatif people give more priority to any particular thing then it can lead themtowards the destruction.1)”The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury (From The NortonAnthology of Short Fiction, 3rd Edition, Edited by R.V. Cassill, New York: W.W.
Norton, 1986. 98-109) 2)
