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Theme of the Veldt

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Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt: An Analysis of Theme

With a whopping growth of 676.3% of Internet users from 2000 to 2014, the significant advancement in technology nowadays enables us to perform daily tasks easier than ever before (World Internet Users). However, too much of a good thing can be bad. With modern technology, people can shop, study, play, or pay bills online on the bed without needing to go out of the house to get it done. As a result, humans are no more aware of their surrounding and have less physical interaction with other people. Similar to today’s scenario, in the story The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, one of the main themes is technology is causing us become more inhuman despite making our life easier. This is emphasized by the author’s use of characters, conflict and style throughout the story.
First of all, the characters in the story emphasize the theme because they show negative behavior. As evidence, Peter clearly shows his laziness in the story when he persuaded his father to not shut down the house because all the machines in the house helped him a lot in doing his daily routine. For example, Peter questioned, “Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it” (Bradbury) to his father when George wanted to turn off the all the automatic appliances in their smart home. This event shows that he has been too pampered and comfortable living along the technologies until he highly depend on it and will not move a muscle for himself. Another evidence is Peter and Wendy becomes rebellious when they successfully breached into the nursery in the middle of the night even it was locked by George. In the story, Lydia realizes that “Wendy and Peter aren’t in their rooms” and George replied, “No, they’ve broken into the nursery” (Bradbury). This displays that they thought that the nursery is everything, far more important in their lives than their parents and they would rather do anything to get it.
Their deep reliance towards the machines in the house has dehumanized them as the dependency on machines slowly overwhelms them.
Besides characters, conflicts that exist in the story also support the main theme as it portrays how problematic the family is. One of the conflict occurs in the story is person versus machine conflict, which is between the parents and the house. The conflict is shown from “You’ve let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children’s affections” (Bradbury). This proves that the house has taken over the role that parents should do and as a result, the children never cared about their parents anymore. Another conflict is a person versus person conflict, which is between the children and their parents. For example, Peter said, “I don’t think you better consider it any more, father” (Bradbury) when his father was trying to turn off the nursery. The dialogue shows that the children are trying to manipulate and force their parents not to shut down the nursery. The conflicts in the story have increased the gap between the members of the family and break the family hierarchy as the technology that they bought for them to make life easier at the end overtook their social interactions.
Apart from that, the theme is also emphasized through the author’s style of writing the story. One of the styles is the author’s use of irony in the story. This can be seen when McClean told, “The room has become a channel towards-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them” (Bradbury). Nursery is supposed to be a place to nurture children but the nursery in the story has turned the children into murderers who in the end kill their own parents. In the other hand, the symbol in the story is the nursery where it symbolizes defectiveness of technology in making human’s life better. After George explained more, McClean continued, “This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents” (Bradbury). Therefore, rather than nurturing children to become a better person, the nursery fails to educate the children and replace their parents’ love. From the outside, technology seems to bring advancement in human daily life. However, deep inside a person’s mind and soul, technology has mentally changed us to become machine slaves.
Based on all the character, conflict and style, the theme technology is causing us become more inhuman despite making human life easier is portrayed very well in the story. As a conclusion, technology segregates us from what is going on around us thus making our human nature to interact with others has been replaced with mobile gadgets. Humans are not following the norm of social human nature any more as we have become more concerned about having than being. Albert Einstein once said, “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots”. Eventually, the day has come.

Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. "The Veldt." 1950.
World Internet Users. 2014. <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>.

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