Reading: The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
In the story, George Hadley and Lydia Hadley, the parents of Wendy Hadley and Peter Hadley, are very skeptical about the nursery room (high technological room) that the room will bring a bad effect on their children mental health in the future. George wants to lock down the nursery room and plans to move into a traditional house to prevent their children get in touch with the room any further. However, their children denied it, and they become furious with their parents’ idea that the nursery room being taken away from them. So, in the day they want to go to for a vacation, Wendy and Peter lock their parents inside the nursery room. The parents began to surrounded by the wild African lions who want to eat them. Then, at the end of the story, Peter and Wendy sit and eat their lunch with ease while the lions are feasting on the distance.
George characteristic is that he being more authoritative than his wife, Lydia. He attempts to take control of his children’s addiction to the nursery. Lydia however, is very emotional, which lets George be the sensible man of the house. Most of her dialogue has some emotional aspect or is marked as emotional. She calls the vultures “filthy,” which is a stronger emotional reaction to the virtual reality nursery than anything George has at the beginning of the story. Wendy and Peter are ten-year-old children and have cheeks like peppermint candy, eyes like bright blue agate marbles. Wendy and Peter may be twins, but Peter is absolutely the ringleader here. After all, he tells Wendy what to do and when to do it. He’s the one who confronts mean old George. They’re smart enough to reprogram the nursery (maybe), they’re independent (they go to a carnival all by themselves), and they go after what they want. Lastly, we have David. He is a psychologist and a friend to the Hadleys. He understands the dangers of the nursery and helps George and Lydia diagnose the problem. He is very brave and calm.
This story takes time in the future, which we can see that the technology is already developed. It takes place only in the Automated Home, which every household works will be done by the house itself. Not only that, the most important place, The Room. The room can change into every setting and place depends on the people there. If they demand or think about Aladdin, then the room will change the setting into Aladdin.
We choose the theme: Children’s personality depends on their parents’ choice or decision. As we can see in the story, George has to make a decision many times. It seems like all of his decisions are not the right one, which will make George, also Lydia, bad parents in educating them. We know that they really care about them, but it is not enough, because the parents and the children are not communicating well to make things clear, and they are not thinking about it (even though they do have that choice actually). In the end, the children become like a psychopath by locking their parents in the room full of lions. The impact of horror is that the parents are really scared. Thus, they can’t think that the parents should communicate with their children to make things clear, but instead, he chooses to do everything he thinks is right even though it will make the children sad. It tells us that if we are too scared, it won’t be any good for us. The worst end that can happen to parents is that they are failed to become parents just like in the story, and the children are now psychopath :)
