Ray+Bradbury


==== **The Veldt** is about Lydia and George Hadlye and their happy-life home. It’s a house that tends to their every need. The **binging** starts with Lydia expressing her concern about the nursery to George. The nursery is a room that depicts images onto the walls, which it receives from people telepathically. The couple goes into the nursery, and sees that the walls have turned into an Africa Veldt with lions feeding in the distance. They run out the room and slam the door. Lydia is scared that the images are becoming too real. She feels sure that the room feeds on the thoughts of the people in the house, after all, the children have been reading a lot about Africa. They consider locking the nursery, but recall the children’s tantrums the last time the nursery was taken away as punishment. George later goes into the room and tries to change the walls into a seen from Aladdin, but it just stays as the African Veldt. When the children get home from school and the parents question them, the children show them that it’s just a lovely green forest. When George is leaving the bedroom, he finds one of his old wallets bloody and chewed up. That night, George and Lydia are discussing what happened, and feel the nursery is causing the children to be spoiled and decide to invite the children’s psychologist over. Later, they hear roars of tigers and screams that sound familiar, but they’re not sure. The next day Peter, the son, asks George if he will lock up the nursery. George says that he may turn the whole house off, and Peter tells him that he better not do that. Then the psychologist arrives and George takes him to the nursery. They see the lions out in the distance feeding and then send the children off to play. The psychologist feels that the children seem to care about the nursery more then their parents. When they were leaving they found a bloody scarf of Lydia’s on the floor. Soon after, George decides to turn the whole house off. The children begged for a few more minutes in the nursery and George and Lydia allowed it. They then hear the children calling them to come into the nursery. They rush in and the lions are approaching. The door slams and they realize that the children locked the door from the outside. They then realize why the screams sounded so famil**iar, they** where their own. The children then greet the psychologist at the door and lead him into the nursery. Then offer him a cup of tea. ====


==== When reading this story I found that the most **reoccurring** theme was abandonment. The whole story is based on the children’s need for the nursery, mostly because of the parents’ lack of parenting. The parents build this smart house, and in a way, forget about their children. There is no normal interaction, the house puts the children to bed, makes their meals, and even entertains them. The parents send them off to the nursery, and don’t express normal human feelings towards their children that belong with being a parent. The parents unknowingly allow the house to be the children’s surrogate parent. Like in this line by David McClean, the psychologist, "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 in their lives than their real parents." The children, in many ways, don’t even see their birth parents as their real parents any more. The nursery is there for them, so the children view even an inanimate object as more of a parental figure than George and Lydia. Then, later in the story, they feel abandoned again because they fear their new parent, the nursery, is going to abandon them when George threatens to turn it off. This thoroughly upsets Peter and he says to George, "I don't think you'd better consider it any more, Father." The way I read it, Peter is threatening his father that he better never turn of the nursery. This shows how attached he is to this room, that he would threaten his father. This fear leads the children to let their parents to be eaten by tigers. They didn’t even bat an eye after their parents were killed. The first thing they did was say, "Oh, they'll be here directly." They were so concentrated on saving their surrogate pa**rent, which they d**idn’t even care when their real parents were eaten by lions. This proves that the main theme was abandonment. ====


==== In reading "The Veldt," I could definitely relate the theme of abandonment to the world. People **everyday** feel abandoned and discarded by someone they love. In order to fill this void, they seek out something else that can help with the pain. What they use to fill the void with is not always constructive. You see people **everyday** turn to alcohol or drugs when something tragic happens in their life. Similar to the story, when the children feel that there parents have turned away from them, they turn to the room that actually responds to their emotions. The room interacts with their thoughts, and being children, they may perceive this as love or some sort of affection. Everybody at some point in **there** life feel abandonment; it's how they respond to that situation that defines them as a person! ====