"The Veldt" uses foreshadowing as a key plot element. This is apparent from the first lines of the story, where Lydia thinks there is something the matter with the nursery room and asks her husband to look at it. Much of the story plays off George's condescension to his wife's concern about the room, but it's clear from the beginning that there is something the matter with it and that George is not taking the situation seriously enough. Bradbury gives us unsettling hints along the way: When George goes into the room, he hears a scream and the sound of lions; he discovers that the room will not respond to his commands. He thinks the room is "out of order," but Lydia suggests that Peter "set it that way," something George dismisses.
Even George begins to be concerned when he confronts the children about the room, and they deny that there is any Africa at all. Then he finds his wallet, chewed and smeared with blood. Later, they hear "familiar" screams coming from the room. When Peter asks if his father is going to keep the room locked up and George says he is considering turning the whole house off, Peter says that he shouldn't consider it any more, a threat that shows how the adults are losing control of the situation.
By this point it should be clear that the lions are real, somehow, and that the children have been planning the death of their parents for some time. What happens to George and Lydia does not come as a surprise.
George and Lydia's violent death in the nursery being eaten by lions is foreshadowed several times.
Both parents are uneasy about the nursery and the strange hold the images of the veldt have on their children. One day, as his concern grows over the nursery, George bends down to find his wallet in the corner of that room:
The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of a lion. There were drops of saliva on it, it bad been chewed, and there were blood smears on both sides.
This clearly foreshadows the violent end awaiting George.
Likewise, when the worried George and Lydia bring in the psychologist, Dave McClean, to assess the situation, he finds Lydia's bloodied scarf lying in the nursery, foreshadowing that Lydia's end is as dire as her husband's.
The parents also hear screams from the nursery:
Two screams. Two people screaming from downstairs. And then a roar of lions.
The strange and dishonest behavior of the children foreshadows as well the grisly ending. When they come in for dinner one day, the children's eyes are hard and bright, like marbles, in a way that seems eerie and inhuman. They then lie when confronted about the veldt scenes in the nursery. Peter says, "I don't remember" an Africa being there, a statement that parents know is a blatant falsehood. The children are, overall, subtly hostile and fearless towards their parents.
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this builds up a sense of foreknowledge about what is going to happen so that we are not surprised when the parents "disappear" when locked by the children in the nursery.
There is immediate foreshadowing in the opening lines of Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt":
'George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.'
'What's wrong with it?'
'I don't know....I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it.'
With this last line of Lydia Hadley (whose name, interestingly, has the past tense of have as part of it), there is a sense of foreboding, not just for the parents, but also for the children since there is the suggestion that they are psychologically altered by this virtual reality of the African jungle. The impending danger is foreshadowed in, not only the charging lions, but more subtlely in the "green-yellow eyes" of these virtual animals, whose evil influence supercedes the parental one. For, the children now have become obsessed with their virtual world, rather than the real one: "They live for the nursery."
Published in 1950, Bradbury's story not only foreshadows the destruction of the family unit of the Hadleys, but it hints at the dangers of virtual reality that are a present threat to the detachment of people from friends and family in modern society.
There is foreshadowing in this story in what happens every time George and Lydia go into the room in the first parts of the story. We know (having read the whole thing) that they are going to end up being killed in the room. We can see this foreshadowed when they go look at the room earlier in the story.
When the do this right at the beginning of the story, something has been killed, which may foreshadow that they will be. More obviously, the lions charge them and they feel like they have barely escaped with their lives. This foreshadows what will actually happen to them.
Then, later on, we see George go into the room and find his old wallet. That is more foreshadowing. Something similar will happen to Lydia later.
What instances of foreshadowing are there in "The Veldt"?
In "The Veldt," there are numerous hints that the children will ultimately use the room to murder their parents. At first these clues seem mysterious and frightening to readers, and gradually their direction becomes more and more obvious.
The first few instances of foreshadowing set the general mood. The parents enter the nursery, and the lions attempt to attack them. When the parents discuss closing the nursery for awhile, George remarks that "they [the children] live for the nursery." In other words, they have become obsessed with it. Later, as George ponders the situation alone, he is concerned that in the African landscape the children are fixating on death.
George goes into the nursery again, and he finds that he cannot change the settings, even though he should be able to with his mind. He becomes worried that it might be broken. When the children return from an outing, they lie about the African nursery setting, and Wendy goes to change it to back up their deception. In the landscape she has changed it to, though, George finds the first physical clue: an old wallet of his with bloodstains on it. By this point, Bradbury has become more definite about the danger the parents are in.
Upstairs while trying to sleep, George and Lydia hear "two people screaming from downstairs," and then they hear "a roar of lions." The screams "sound familiar," and readers realize that the children are simulating their parents' deaths. George hints to Peter that he might close up the nursery, and Peter threatens that he had better not.
When the psychologist and George approach the nursery, there are more screams and another simulated death. The psychologist warns that the children's hatred has taken over the room, the room having supplanted their parents, and that George had better shut it down for good. On their way out, they find the second physical clue, a bloody scarf that belongs to Lydia. Soon afterwards, the children lock their parents in the nursery, and the lions attack.
We see, then, that Bradbury uses numerous instances of foreshadowing in this gripping story.