The veldt

In the futuristic short story “The Veldt” two wealthy parents live in a mechanized house with their two children. One of the features of the home is a computerized nursery that makes the children’s every wish reality. When the nursery starts to display an all too real and death-filled African veldt, the mother starts to worry. Once she finally gets the father to realize that there is trouble they call the psychiatrist  too look at the nursery and they shut they house off, meaning they have to clean, bathe, and even tie their own shoes. The children through a fit and look the parents in the nursery in with the lions, and once the psychiatrist returns, do the same with him.

For some time I have seen children be spoiled rotten. You see them everywhere, in your family, grocery stores, toy stores, most stores, and their tantrums can get on everyone’s nerves sometimes. This story takes it to a new level, murder. I found it interesting how they children, with the help of the house, could be pretty much independent. The children have the means to go places they want too, get their own food, get wash, and live in a very comfortable environment. I believe that this could have interfered with their mental state, making it partially adult, but still very child-like. This is dangerous to the parents in the end and kills them. The abundance of technology in the house makes the children dependent on it, so when the parents go around and turn everything off it is a huge shock and pushes them over the edge. For months before, when the children started to be dissatisfied with their parents, the children had been creating facsimiles of their parents and feeding them to the lions. This shows that having so much given to them had altered the children’s minds and had made them dangerous. I believe in a way this is the parent’s fault, but the parents did it with the best intentions. This story shows that sometimes we can nurture too much, and if we give everything to our children without making them work it damages them in a way. The story shows that you can indeed be spoiled rotten.

“The house is wife and mother and now nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt?” pg. 10

This interested me because the mother is first to see a problem, the father shrugs it off.

“Those screams- they sound familiar.”

 This line was a little creepy to me because the parents didn’t go check out the screams, no matter how familiar.