The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury, is a short story about Mr. and Mrs. Hadley who live in a house with their two children, Wendy and Peter, and have grown to depend completely on the technology and artificial intelligence that their house possesses.
They have things like air closets that suck you up and bring you to your sleeping room, a shoe lacer, voice clocks, shoe shiners, a body scrubber, massagers, and even a virtual realty nursery. The children have an addiction to the technology in the house, especially to the nursery. It all started when Lydia Hadley, the wife, noticed something different about the nursery. When George Hadley, the husband, went to check it out he noticed the children had set it to the African veldt, but it didn't seem like the normal nursery, the hot African air and the blood thirsty lions roaming felt almost... real. Familiar screams echoed throughout the veldt and Mrs. Hadley couldn't put her finger on it but it scared her to tears. Mr. Hadley attempted to change it to Aladdin and his lamp, something less gruesome, but the nursery didn't change, it stayed on the African veldt. Coming to the conclusion that Peter had tampered with it, George Hadley asked his kids, when they arrived home from the plastic carnival, why they had the nursery set to the African veldt but it was quickly denied by Peter and then changed by Wendy. Feeling confused and frustrated at the nursery George and Lydia called David McClean, a local psychologist, and he gave them the gist of it, something was off, it didn't feel good he said. While observing the room they found objects of George and Lydia's, bloody and ragged, and, boy, should they have taken that as a red flag. Deciding it would be best for the family, Mr. and Mrs. Hadley decided to unplug and go to Iowa on a well needed vacation. The children definitely did not agree, they cried and screamed and wished death upon their parents for doing such a treacherous thing to them. But Lydia, feeling sympathetic, convinced George to let the children have just one more minute in the nursery before they left for the airport. The parents went upstairs to dress, leaving the children in the nursery, only a few moments in and they heard the children screaming for them. They rushed down the stairs and straight into the nursery, but it was empty. The door behind them slammed shut leaving them locked in Africa with the lions. They pleaded for Wendy and Peter to let them out as the lions crowed around, a lion on all three sides, but Wendy and Peter were upset, upset that they were going to have to unplug, upset that they would be deprived of the nursery for who knows how long, upset that their father wouldn't let them go to New York, upset that their father was slowly taking machines away from them, holding a grudge is a fatal flaw, a fatal flaw that Wendy and Peter both possessed. The lions moved closer to Mr. and Mrs. Hadley, they screamed, and realized why those screams they heard before were so familiar.
I think that one of the main themes in this story is that spoiling your children can have more consequences than you would presume. Mr. McClean, the psychologist sensed that the kids were spoiled, spoiled more than your average spoiled child. "I sensed that you were spoiling your children more than most." (22). Mr. Hadley even said that Peter threw tantrums when he didn't get his own way, it was just leading up to something bigger than a tantrum. "When I punished him a few months ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours--the tantrum he threw!" (12). The third example of this theme is the parents realize that spoiling their children didn't do much good for anyone. "We've given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward--secrecy, disobedience?" (18). The children were spoiled in a way that everything was handed to them, no matter what, and when it suddenly stopped and they were going to have to do things for themselves that was a big problem. These examples show that spoiling your children in this way won't necessarily result in anything good.
I would definitely recommend this story to other seventh graders. The technology that's talked about and used in this story is strictly amazing, things that were not even invented when this book was written but are now, things that one could only imagine using, and everything in between. This story is very well written, and has some major plot twits, and is filled with small mysteries that leave you thinking all throughout the story. Although, it is a bit gruesome, and not everyone is attracted to stories like that so if you don't like reading anything gruesome let alone the thought of it then I would have caution. But as for the others, it's a very interesting story, in my opinion, and is defiantly worth your time.
