The Veldt

With the opening line of dialogue, “George, I wish you’d look at the nursery” (239), Bradbury puts the children’s nursery at the center of the plot. After more dialogue establishing the relationship between George and Lydia, Bradbury switches to description of their modernistic house. The name of the house, the “soundproofed Happy-life Home,” satirizes advertising language and its pretenses of creating happiness through material convenience.

Bradbury describes the conveniences and wonders of the home, which “clothed and fed and rocked [the Hadleys] to sleep and played and sang and was good to them” (239). It is a place where lights automatically turn on at a person’s approach and where the kitchen cooks food by itself. The author paints a picture of a pampered and enervated existence, in which every action is automated, and the push of a button takes care of every human need.

The nursery is a luxury feature that costs half as much as the rest of the house. Here is another evocative description, this time of the simulated world of the African veldt. George’s line, “This is a little too real,” points to the danger that the nursery portends. Lydia hears a scream in the distance, which her husband does not notice. They both see vultures circling on dead prey. Bradbury uses an invented technological vocabulary to evoke this futuristic sensory world: “Superactionary, supersensitive color film […] odorophonics and sonics” (241).

From the beginning, George and Lydia show contrasting attitudes toward the home and its technology. Lydia is worried and frightened by the realism of the nursery, but George hardily insists it is all make-believe: “Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that’s all they are” (241). Later, Lydia expresses a desire to take a vacation from their home, to which George eventually agrees. By the end of the story, George will have completely come around to Lydia’s point of view, but Lydia causes their eventual downfall by indulging in the children’s whim to enjoy the nursery one last time.

George and Lydia’s encounter with the lions foreshadows their eventual fate. Lydia is frightened by their realism, but George comforts her. In this scene, we see the love and affection that George and Lydia share: “‘Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!’ […] She came to him and put her body against him and cried steadily” (241).

The Hadley’s children, Peter and Wendy first appear on Page 242. They are inordinately attached to the nursery, indeed spoiled by it: “When I punished [Peter] a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours—the tantrum he threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery” (242).

Lydia voices her misgivings about the family’s technological lifestyle: “I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now and nursemaid” (242). She declares that George, too, has been acting nervous and out of sorts. George reflects that “it won’t hurt for the children to be locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything isn’t good for anyone” (243). The children’s interest in reading about Africa has led them to invent the fantasy world of their nursery. George and Lydia agree to shut the house down for a while. Although he thinks differently from his wife, George shows the capacity to listen and be influenced by her. Lydia is shown as the more perceptive of the two, although tragically weak in the end.

There’s a scene at dinner where the dinner table prepares food by itself. Later, Bradbury presents a further example of technology in the home when an “air closet” pneumatically sucks the children up to their rooms. George’s thoughts turn unexpectedly to death—a premonition of his and Lydia’s fate. The couple hear lions roaring menacingly in the distance, as well as human screams. George enters the nursery and attempts to change it to a more friendly scene, the story of Aladdin, but the room fails to respond to his mental command. George wants to get to the bottom of this technological failure.

When Wendy and Peter return home, they deny that the nursery is set to an African scene. Upon returning to the nursery, George discovers that it is indeed set to an idyllic forest scene complete with Rima, a lovely long-haired singing maiden. Ominously, George also discovers his half-mangled wallet on the floor of the nursery. The suspicion arises that the children are behaving duplicitously, and that they may have stolen their father’s wallet and changed the nursery on purpose. The author hints at the bad moral effect that technology has on the children.

George and Peter have a confrontation about shutting the house down, and the extent of Peter’s spoiled nature becomes evident. He practically threatens his father: “I don’t think you’d better consider it any more, Father” (248).

Another crucial scene follows between George and family friend David McClean, a psychologist. Hearing screams from the nursery, the two men go to examine it. McClean explains that the original purpose of the nursery was to aid in psychological research—to allow psychologists to study the patterns left on the walls by the child’s mind and thus gain an insight into their thought processes. This insight would allow the psychologist to guide children toward mental health. Instead, the opposite has occurred. The nursery has become a mere entertainment. Rather than being a release from “destructive thoughts” (249), it has become a channel toward them. McClean advises George to have the nursery torn down and the children brought to him for treatment. He promises that he can change their behavior in a year.

Before switching off the nursery, George and McClean discover another menacing omen: a bloodied scarf of Lydia’s lying about in a way similar to George’s wallet.

The children throw a wild tantrum when told of the plans to turn off the nursery. Contradicting her former resolve, Lydia gives in to their pleas to enjoy the nursery for a few moments longer. George, in turn, gives into Lydia: “All right—all right, if they’ll only just shut up” (251). This decision seals their fate. Bradbury suggests that giving in to the threats of spoiled children is a weak and cowardly act. The sequence of events recalls the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, in which Satan tempted Eve, then Eve enticed Adam, who in turn succumbed to the temptation to the detriment of humanity.

Bradbury provides an evocative and ominous description of the house after all its machines are turned off—like a “mechanical cemetery” (251). Everything in the story is rushing toward eventual death. Peter hysterically wails at the ceiling “as if he was talking to the house, the nursery” (251), thus showing the extent to which technology has blurred the distinction between humanity and machines. George insists that in turning off the machines, they will begin to live a more authentic life.

George announces that David McClean will assist them in moving out and taking their vacation, thus emphasizing the important role that McClean plays as the Hadley’s family friend and counselor. The destination of their trip, Iowa, symbolizes a traditional agrarian lifestyle—the antithesis of the Happy-life Home.

Although George and Lydia have shut off the house machines, George still uses the air flue to get upstairs to dress, suggesting that even he is unable completely to let go. Up in their bedroom, George and Lydia acknowledge that it was “pride, money, foolishness” (251) that caused them to build this home, a “nightmare.”

Crying out as if in in danger, Peter and Wendy trick their parents into coming downstairs and into the nursery, then lock them in. The lions are there waiting to devour them. George and Lydia scream, and in doing so, they realize why the earlier screams they heard from the nursery sounded so familiar. Their fate is sealed.

Bradbury does not describe the gruesome scene that follows, but instead cuts to the arrival of McClean. The children are now sitting calmly in the veldt eating a picnic. In a way that is arguably more eerie than any overt description, Bradbury merely hints at the grisly fate of Mr. and Mrs. Hadley: “At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the shady trees” (252), followed by the arrival of vultures to finish off the carcasses. Bradbury leaves much to the reader’s imagination.

The final words of the story belong to Wendy (“A cup of tea?”), closing the tale on a note of grim humor and indicating the casual depravity of the children.