Technology In The Veldt By Ray Bradbury

Imagine living in a house that literally does everything for you. You don’t have to worry about cooking, watching your kids, cleaning, or ever running out of things to do. The parents in this story have allowed their house to do everything for these children for their whole lives. Once it’s time to let the house go all family members don’t know how to act towards each other since they’ve all been separated by the technology the have in their home. From reading the short story “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, you could easily see that technology has pulled people away from the things that are really important, and they don’t realize how important those things are until they are gone.
Everyone wants the newer and better electronics, so the more
technology people get the more they are going to let technology do for them. You can see this throughout “The Veldt” several times which makes it easy to identify. An example from the book that helps prove this point is when the narrator says “They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed.” Showing that these people have the newer and more expensive technology. Another example from the book that helps prove this point is when again the narrator says “They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms.” Which is basically saying that these kids have a “air closet” that you wouldn’t see in today's technology. Although some may argue that the kids aren’t attached to the technology, but this piece of evidence helps refute that. “They’ve been acting funny ever since ever since you forbade them to take the rocket to New York a few months ago” Although some may argue that the kids aren’t attached to the technology In current time you would never imagine a kid taking a rocket to a different state. It just shows how much technology is grown and how attached these children are to these electronics.
Technology can’t teach people what to do in real life situations, because some programs get you under a different influence that won’t help you in the future when you need it or just won’t help you at all. In the short story the father says “Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally?’ He feels this way because his children have grown so attached to the technology that HE provided for them and now doesn’t know how to handle it. Another part in this story that fits this category as well as when a different character in the story says “a tendency toward a slight paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constandy, but, oh, really nothing” These kids don’t know how to act because they’ve grown up with technology all around them that when something doesn’t work they don’t know what to do. An example from the story of that is when the mom says “You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours- the tantrum he threw! And wendy too. They live for the nursery” All the parents did was take away one piece of technology for a little bit and since the kids have always had it, they don’t know what to do now that it’s gone which won’t help them in the real world. It’s almost teaching the kids to be stubborn and is giving the parents the wrong way to act towards things because they don’t know what’s right vs. what’s wrong. I believe that technology has pulled people away from the things that are really important because for the obvious reason that technology distracts us from actually doing something.
While reading “The Veldt” I came upon a paragraph that showed that these people were so fascinated by technology that they didn’t even realize what was actually going on. The character says “And here were the lions now. fifteen feet away. so real. so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand. and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated belts. and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry. the yellows of lions and summer grass. and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide. and the smell of meat from the panting. dripping mouths.” Another example that I came by was “You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?” and “Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot” This shows that the mother is clueless on how to give her own child a bath and that she doesn't know how to do the easiest things such as cooking. The technology that this family owns is basically their family, but it’s pulling them away from each other and has been distracting this family from the little things that makes a family feel like
family.

However, this author uses Descriptive language to make the reader get a better picture on the scenes. He uses descriptive language to help show the reader all the technology they have and how easy and nice it is. An example of this that I saw in the book was describing their nursery which was included with their happy life home, “And here were the lions now. fifteen feet away. so real. so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand. and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated belts. and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry. the yellows of lions and summer grass. and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide. and the smell of meat from the panting. dripping mouths.” That descriptive language is helping the reader get a better picture of the scene and in this case it really helps the reader for the rest of the story to have a better understanding.

Once again in this story almost everything revolves around technology.
Ray Bradbury uses short sentences, similes, metaphors, and long sentences to get the message out that technology has had a huge impact on the decisions we make on a daily basis. It has pulled people away from the things that are most important and they don’t realize how important those things are until they are gone. Not only can technology take over a person but it can’t teach people what to do in real life situations. And distracts us from actually doing something. With that being said have you’ve ever done something with technology that you wouldn’t be able to do in a real life
situation?

Technology can also almost take over a person since everyone wants the newer and better electronics, so the more technology people get the more they are going to let technology do for them. And technology can’t teach people what to do in real life situations, because some programs get you under a different perspective that won’t help you in the future when you need it (such as job interviews and learning life lessons, etc) Finally, I believe that technology has pulled people away from the things that are really important because for the obvious reason that technology distracts us from actually doing something. Nowadays you don’t see a kid or an adult choosing to go on a walk over than sitting on an electronic or doing something with technology; and once these kids/adults become too attached to it, it’s then harder for them to give it up.