I don’t know—I don’t know...Maybe I don’t have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don’t we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation? (4)

I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn’t just me. It’s you. You’ve been awfully nervous lately (4).

They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring. They’re spoiled and we’re spoiled (8).

One indication that Lydia is not happy is her concern about her children's mental state. The scenes in the nursery are projections of the children's interests. When Lydia asks George to "look at" the nursery, he immediately understands that something has gone wrong with it. She next suggests that if he himself does not look at it, he should get a psychologist to do so. That is, rather than a technological issue in the projection system, she interprets the problem as something that is caused by what her children are requesting.

George soon shares in this concern, as the narrator presents his thoughts on the matter. George understands that the children, in conjuring up lions and vultures, are thinking about death. He thinks that they are too young for such thoughts, but his own morbid preoccupation leads him to conclude: "you were never too young, really. Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else." Lydia's unhappiness includes her alienation from her own home, in which she feels she no longer belongs.

Ray Bradbury seems to suggest that technology does not present a solution to human problems; rather, it reflects or even magnifies those problems.

That the Happylife Home system has not made George and Lydia Hadley particularly happy is evinced in their anxieties about the nursery.

"It's just that the nursery is different now than it was," Mrs. Hadley tells her husband because she is anxious about this room in which the children play. When she and George enter the nursery, a virtual reality exists inside: The ceiling becomes "a deep sky with a hot yellow sun," and an African veldt appears, complete with odors and sounds. Over their heads a shadow is cast and George notices that it is caused by swooping vultures. Lydia points to lions going to a water hole to drink after they have apparently been eating something. She, then, asks her husband if he has heard a scream.

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 the yellow of them was in your eyes...the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide....

Lydia, then, screams, "Watch out!" as the lions charge them. They bolt for the door. Outside Lydia tells her husband, "They almost got us!" But, George patronizes her, saying that the walls are crystal and everything is "all odorophonics and sonics." Still, Lydia is frightened, and she urges George to tell the children not to read any more on Africa. And, she asks that George lock the nursery for a few days.

Early in "The Veldt," what evidence are we given that the Happylife Home system has not made either of the adults particularly happy? What message might Bradbury be trying to deliver here?

The mother is nervous about the nursery from the start of the story. In fact, she expresses her anxiety in the very first line: "George, I'd wish you'd look at the nursery," and then, to justify herself, says "It's just that the nursery is different now than it was." Lydia senses that something has changed about the nursery, and her fear of the lions is based on intuition, rather than reason. When George laughs at her for being afraid, Bradbury is framing the issue the story raises, which is that technology is not value neutral. George's belief that the nursery is just "crystal walls" suggests that he thinks the nursery is simply a plaything, or a means of entertainment for their children. Lydia, however, knows better: she sees the nursery as an indication of some inward shift in her children (which is why she wants a psychologist to "look" at it). Her anxiety comes from knowing that somehow the nursery is enabling her children to realize their darkest fantasies, and that through it, she has effectively lost her ability to be a parent.

Early in "The Veldt," what evidence are we given that the Happylife Home system has not made either of the adults particularly happy? What message might Bradbury be trying to deliver here?

Both parents show fear of the lions on the viewscreens in the nursery early on in the story. Soon afterwards, Lydia says to George:

I feel like I don't belong here. ... Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you. You've been awfully nervous lately.

While they bought the Happylife home so that it would do all the work for them, the parents realize after the fact that the home has taken over parenting their children. Their children are turning on the parents, favoring the nursery. George and Lydia's dream house has become a nightmare that is tearing the family apart and ruining their children. Both parents have become increasingly uneasy and uncertain what to do. 

Bradbury's message is that technology in modern society is out of control, displacing and destroying traditional human relationships. Too much technology becomes a trap that robs people of meaning and humanity. 

Early in the story, what evidence are we given that the Happylife Home system has not made either of the adults particularly happy? What message might Bradbury be trying to deliver here?

Lydia Hadley begins the story, expressing her concern and desire for her husband, George to take a peek into their kids' room. She declares that she wants either him or a psychologist to look at it. For her to suggest that something is wrong with the room and to request that a psychologist examine it certainly implies that there is a problem; one does not request the services of a psychologist unless something is amiss. When the couple enters the room, George declares that "'This is a little too real,'" and they see vultures—"'Filthy creatures,'" Lydia calls them—circling overhead. The lions approach them, and Lydia screams in terror. Both Lydia and George run from the room, and Lydia feels that the lions almost got them, and she weeps. The narrator has said that such rooms "occasionally [...] frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, [and] gave you a twinge [...].'" Certainly, the level of concern and fright that Lydia feels must gives us pause.

Bradbury seems to be laying the groundwork for the idea that we can certainly go too far with our creation of new technologies; perhaps there's a dash of be careful what you wish for in this story as well. There also seems to be a theme regarding the proper way to raise children: when we allow someone or something else to parent them, they will have no respect for their actual parents.