Problems started to arise within the family when the kids started to set the nursery to veldt (a country in Africa where the lions have returned). This resulted in causing fear, because Lydia thought the veldet was dangerous place for their kids to be in. She was not wrong, as we all know the story ended Both George and Lydia being locked in the nursery by their kids.
what I want to focus from the story is on how the advancement of technology replaced the relationship between the kids and their parents. In the story, the children fail to have any positive communications with their parents. Many of the interaction with their parents was unhealthy and depends on threatening their parents on getting what they want. Since the parents had stripped from their parenting duty, they forgot on how to respond and communicate with their children. These negative interactions emphasize the importance of inter-family communications. This can relate to the problems we have now a days, with electronic devices interfering the relashionship between parents and their children.
In the story the major advantage of the house was to fulfill their needs and desires, but it became a point of stress than happiness. Both George and Lydia struggled in finding happiness in their everyday life since the house replaced their traditional roles as parents. At one point of the story we can see Lydia expressing her fear and wanting to go back to a regular life by saying, "I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African Veldt? Can I give bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot". We can see from that statement that they wanted to go back even though it would require them extra work and tasks. Parenting is more than simply providing your child with everything he or she would like. They both belived the house would solve their problems and ease their duties instead it caused more problems.
I also believe both George and Lydia struggle on finding their identity as couple. Lydia as a parent was concerned in finding a way on fixing their relationship with their kids and was asking her husband on turning off the house, but instead of listening his wife he was waitiing in get confimation from psychologist David on turning off the house. This shows us on how George puts more trust on the psychologist than his own wife.
The other main thing that we observe from Bradbury short stories is, his fear of technology taking place over human responsibilities. If we look into one of his stories we discussed in class ,"There will come soft rain", the house does everything for the family as the nursery did in "The Veldt". Both stories features similar themes regarding the danger of technology. On both stories technology was intended to make life better but it ended up in having the opposite effect on both physical and emotional level. Bradbury's stories are a reminder for us to set boundaries when it comes on using electronic devices.
Work cite:
Bradbury, Ray. “The Veldt.” The Illustrated Man. New York: Random House Publishing. 1951.
When reading The Veldt, I also pulled the same theme of technology prohibiting an optimal bond between not only the family in the story but also families in current society. There is even current research to support how technology has changed family dynamics and the behavior of children. One point that you brought up within your post that I thought was interesting was how the technology, which was made to be an alleviator of stress, became the agent of their stress. I saw that to be very ironic and I now wonder if that will happen in our current society?
ReplyDelete-Kyra Moore
To speak a little bit to both your interpretation of Bradbury short stories being a warning about technological reliance's propensity to make humans lazy and complacent. As well as Kyra's inquisition into if that is happening in today's day and age; I would say, first to the former I agree and to the latter we can see examples of this in companies that file things using A.I automation like certain banks and how that is extremely sustainable to things like errors and hacks. As well as has decreased public interest in learning certain things that are moving towards the realm of fully, non-human operational automation. That could be things we might need like certain mathematical calculations.
ReplyDelete-Kenneth
I have been watching a show on Netflix called "Lost in Space", and in the show the character of the show have a fear of this robotic alien that has now joined the group. The alien was saved by a young boy in the show and has changed to become a protector of the boy, but before this, the alien attacked the ship they were traveling in to another planet, so the fear isn't completely unjustified. The thing I found weird in both of these stories is that both families live in a very technological world, but seem to still be afraid of technology. But, in both stories it is the older folks who have distrust, in both stories the younger generation loves the tech and are dependent on it. Maybe there will come a time when I'm the one afraid of technology but I sure hope not.
ReplyDeleteCarter Messner
I felt this story communicated a fear of technology. As this story was being written in the 1950s, technology was still at an early stage in its development. This raised a lot of fears of how it would change their daily lives. One of these fears was the lack of communication that technology could create and another was that the people using the technology would become replaced and unneeded in the lives of those around them. I felt the veldt communicated these fears extremely well. While technology does not have as extreme of an effect as this story implied, it does however still cause a disconnect or a barrier in understanding.
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