The Veldt By Ray Bradbury

  

  

Whoopee, finally first review on a science fiction story! 😊

This story for me was like confronting yet consorting with the EVILS of technology!

Being an electronics & telecommunication engineer myself (though I no longer associate being one and consider myself totally a literature girlfriend/lover 😊), I adored this story based on magic, technology, and the future to bits!!

 

During my teens, I would ponder if technology is a boon or a bane? Then I stopped ruminating any longer on the ills of technology, because of the prolific inventions profusely being lauded and inundating human lives in entirety, moreover everyone partaking in its bounteous growth!

What is the use to mull over the vile of technology when you see the costliest of iPhones being established as a status symbol in society! Isn’t so?

 

Reading this story was like an epiphany for me! It was like confronting all the violent and evil effects of technology like video games (PubG and many more ) and sensing what the metaverse is on the verge to offer us all and foreseeing the corrupt future, yet consorting with it. After all, I am using my laptop, and the internet, to post my review and share moments of bliss with my virtual GRs friends! But again, this is an example of the positive use of technology and not the negative.

 

Without digressing any further and not falling victim to the flood of my emotions, let me quickly give you all an extremely abridged synopsis without any spoilers-

 

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Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" is a short story in which the Hadley’s parents become concerned when their children's soundproofed HappyLife Home, costing them $30K begins to reflect their young children’s violent fantasies.

The children of George and Lydia (Wendy and Peter) are obsessed with their nursery, which is a virtual entertainment room. Wendy and Peter have recently been conjuring up the African veldt in the nursery, and George and Lydia are concerned about the veldt’s vicious and brutal character.

“The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun — sun. Giraffes — giraffes. Death and death. “

They try to turn off the nursery, but subsequently, they reluctantly give their children one more minute.

““All right — all right, if they’ll just shut up. One minute, mind you, and then off forever.” “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” sang the children, smiling with wet faces.”

The kids summon George and Lydia to the nursery, then what follows was beyond my contemplation. It was a shocker to me!

 

Warning- Only if you have the temerity and chutzpah, please venture into reading this story, or else drop it. It might leave you bemused and in angst!

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The nursery delineates that death has become a prominent thought in Wendy’s and Peter’s minds. George orders the nursery’s machinery to change the veldt, but due to the malfunction caused due to overuse or tampering by the children, it refuses to do so! ☹

George even discovers an old wallet of his on the nursery floor, engulfed with toothmarks, and smothered in lion’s odor, and blood. Isn’t it scary? The parents later hear humans' screams and lion’s roars coming from the nursery.

The children are adamant and outrightly deny forgoing and abandoning the nursery. I was surprised to see Lydia falling victim to the blindness of her mother’s love and joining the children in pleading George for a minute more, for viewing the nursery, until George relented. This fatherly relenting costing them something irrevocable. (concealing spoilers)!!

 

 

 

The story poses many critical questions, bringing forth the future. Engendering questions worth pondering! I must say to a great extent the present is already disseminating the evil threats of over-abuse and negative-implementation of technology!

Apart from majorly portraying the evil side of technology, the story renders a twinge to many parents to reflect on the structure of boundaries they lay between children and technology-usage. Just a few days back, I wrote a piece on today’s generation born with gadgets and in gadgets and dying inside gadgets. What a plight? Alas ☹

 

It is horrific to see humans not being able to stay away from technology for a moment! This is referred to as SLAVERY to technology. It has dissipated the innate human innocence most ruthlessly.

The story leaves the readers mulling over 3 major issues of children-parent relationship, the docility imposed on humans by technology, and the absence of real physical relationships in our lives and basing altogether on the virtual world to whet and quench our appetite for relationships.

This is entirely my personal takeaway from the story, and it is not meant to hurt the sentiments of avid technology lovers. So, pardon me in advance!  😊

 

I can’t help but downpour infinite stars from the sky of technology on this brilliant, grandiose, magnificent futuristic piece of a story written in an era when the concept was totally inconceivable and incredible to digest!