Monday, August 17, 2015

Are the parents good in the story "The Veldt?"

The parents in Bradbury's "The Veldt" are good, well-meaning people who love their children. However, they have made some mistakes. First, they believed they could buy their way to a happy family life by purchasing the expensive Happylife Home. It does everything for them, including parenting their children. Mrs. Hadley feels displaced because the home has taken over her function as housewife and mother. She has little to nothing to do.
Perhaps the worst mistake the parents have made is building the expensive nursery for the children with its walls of screens that display everything the children want to see. As the story opens, the parents are beginning to realize that the nursery has replaced them as parents. They are beginning to realize that the technology they bought to serve them is beginning to own them and their children.
Because the Hadleys are fundamentally good people, they don't want to face that their children might have turned to evil and might deliberately have planned to have the lions murder and eat them. Because of this, the parents leave themselves open to being killed. Although they should have been firmer about turning off the nursery, their hearts were in the right place.

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