Discussion Topic
The impact of Bradbury's literary techniques on readers in "The Veldt."
Summary:
Bradbury's literary techniques in "The Veldt" create a sense of suspense and unease. His use of vivid imagery and foreshadowing draws readers into the story, making them feel the tension and danger experienced by the characters. This immersive experience highlights the potential dangers of over-reliance on technology and the loss of familial connections.
How does Bradbury create suspense in "The Veldt"?
An author has effectively created suspense when the reader feels compelled to keep reading to see what happens. Bradbury creates suspense and hints at danger in the first few lines of the story by letting the reader know that there is a problem with the children's nursery. The wife mentions the possibility of a psychologist examining the nursery, which causes the reader to question the necessity of her request. Why would a psychologist need to visit a room? When George and Lydia visit the nursery and see that the lions have been eating, George assumes the lions must have eaten an animal. Lydia, however, responds with, "Are you sure?" Her question creates more suspense because the reader again must question why she feels the way she does. Bradbury provides more clues that something dangerous or frightening will happen. For example, George sees the door of the nursery shake as if...
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something hits it from inside, he hears screams from the nursery, and inside he finds an old wallet of his and a scarf belonging to his wife. Both the wallet and the scarf are bloody. Finally, when the psychologist sees the room, he says, "This is very bad." These hints of something terrible create suspense and encourage the reader to keep reading.
Bradbury uses imageryand foreshadowing to create and maintain suspense in this short story. The story constantly brings us back, through the eyes of the increasingly anxious parents, to the ominous veldt that the children watch obsessively in the nursery. The veldt is described using unpleasant images that make the parents and, hence the reader, uneasy: it's very hot under a blazing sun, vultures circle, and lions prowl. At one point, the lions seem to lunge at the parents, causing them to run frightened from the nursery. At other points, the parents hear screams, as if the lions are eating humans. As time goes on, hints that the veldt is a threat to the parents magnify: the Hadleys find Mr. Hadley's chewed wallet, complete with saliva and bloodstains, on the nursery floor, as well as Mrs. Hadley's bloody scarf. All of these ominous happenings hint at or foreshadow that the lions will eat the Hadley parents. This raises our suspense: are the parents irrational or reasonable in their fears? Can lions in a televised program actually destroy real humans? Will the Hadley parents actually be murdered in the nursery, as all the hints indicate? Or can get they get away?
How does the author create and maintain suspense in "The Veldt"?
Bradbury builds suspense through the use of uncertainty. It makes absolutely no sense that the video images projected on the nursery walls are anything more than realistic film of the African veldt. In a rational universe, the images could not cross from the view screens into the real world the Hadley's occupy.
And yet, step by step, Bradbury creates the creepy feeling that this is exactly would could—and did—happen.
Part of how he does this is by having Mr. Hadley provide a reasonable explanation for the nursery after it has frightened Lydia. This reasonable explanation nevertheless leaves the readers saying "but" . . .
Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that's all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit—Africa in your parlor—but it's all dimensional, superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens.
Bradbury has already undercut Mr. Hadley's reasonable conclusion with the vivid description of the lions and the veldt that he provides, so realistic it helps convince the audience the lions just could just be real:
. . . you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts . . . and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.
Bradbury continues to build suspense by dropping hints that lead us to suspect something very bad is going to happen. For example, near the end of the story, David McClean picks up Lydia's bloody scarf from the nursery floor. At this point, it seems the "fiction" of the view screens and the "fact" of the real world can converge.
Finally, we have the odd behavior of the children, who seem much more attached to the nursery than to their parents. This also raises the prickly feeling that something is going to go very wrong.
Suspense is created through the use of foreshadowing.
Suspense is the interest a reader has in a story. It is the feeling of wondering what is going to happen and wanting to keep reading to find out. One way Bradbury creates suspense in this story is through the use of foreshadowing, which is when an author drops hints early in the story that help the reader make predictions.
There seems to be something wrong from the beginning of the story. Lydia Hadley wants her husband George to come look at the nursery or show it to a psychologist. This is not a normal occurrence, so the reader should begin to feel more and more uneasy. When we learn about the expensive HappyLife home that does everything for them, and the expensive nursery, we are more and more interested to know what is going on.
Once in the room, it is clear that this is where the problem is.
"Let's get out of this sun," he said. "This is a little too real. But I don't see anything wrong."
The fact that the parents are concerned about the nursery, and say that it is too real, foreshadows the ending when the animals eat the parents. The children’s reactions to their parents’ concerns also shows that they might be homicidal.
Bradbury’s story is suspenseful because it keeps us guessing. We get hints from the very beginning that something is wrong, and these hints directly foreshadow (hint at) the murder of the parents by their violence-obsessed spoiled children. There's a dark warning here. If you overindulge people, they become dangerous.
How does "The Veldt" create suspense?
The definition of "crude" relies upon some subjective conditions; what is crude to one person might not be to another. Typically, crude things are those which hearken more to the "animalistic" side of human nature, and many in a civilized society would consider impolite to mention, not only because they may be inherently antagonistic but also because mentioning them reflects a lack of social courtesy. Crudeness may also reflect a simple lack of refinement, such as by sparing descriptive details; for example, describing the sun as hot.
The use of crude details or imagery in a story can be employed to shock the reader, or to call attention to the lack of civilized influence that the presentation of the crude statement presents.
In "The Veldt", crude imagery is generally employed to represent how civilization is absent in the nursery, and has been replaced with the brutal details of the natural world. There are repeated references made to blood, particularly the smell of it, but the only other crude detail that might be considered offensive is the single mention of "clean bones" left behind by the lions after feeding. Instead, the majority of crude details are simply those which lack refinement; the sun is hot, the land is yellow, and so forth. This may represent the simple nature of the landscape, or the simple mentalities of the children who imagined it.
These details create suspense because they feel artificially stunted, and reflect the simplicity and brutality of this landscape. Compare this to the conjured depiction of Rima and her forest, and the details used to describe her, and the generally pleasant and benign mood this creates. The crudeness of the African setting's details is a reminder that civilization is absent there.
What effect does Bradbury's use of juxtaposition in "The Veldt" have on readers?
The effect of juxtaposition in Bradbury's "The Veldt" on readers is abject horror. The sharp contrast between specific images—HappyLife Home’s hallway and the nursery itself; the nursery’s past fairy-tale settings and its current African setting; and the parents and their children—emphasizes the dangers of a fully mechanized, futuristic life.
First, the stark difference between the hallway and the nursery illustrate how out-of-control and menacing the room and children have become. The house coddles its inhabitants; it
clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.
As George and Lydia walk down the hallway,
their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft automaticity.
Everything runs smoothly with an invisible hand for the maximum convenience and comfort of its inhabitants. The hallway seems like a safe, protective cave. The “soft automaticity” of the lights creates an atmosphere of placidity.
In the next paragraph, however, the nursery is presented as an uncomfortable, unprotected space. With a “thatched floor,” it is as hot as an open African plane “at hot high noon.” The nursery’s personified walls “purr” and appear eerily threatening. Instead of gentle lights, a blazing sun illuminates George and Lydia. Disturbing image, odors, and sounds of predatory animals permeate this unsettling environment created by their children's desires.
The juxtaposition of the hallway and the nursery stress the frightening verisimilitude of the veldt. George admires how the nursery’s details
frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery.
Second, the contrast between the nursery’s fairy-tale settings and the African veldt emphasizes the gap between innocence and malevolence. The parents note that their children, Wendy and Peter, used to conjure up playful settings based on storybooks. George reminisces how the nursery contained
Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow jumping over a very real-appearing moon-all the delightful contraptions of a make-believe world.
Joyful objects are then juxtaposed with gloomy images:
How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling, or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now, is yellow hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat.
The uplifting mythical and religious figures of purity and whimsical firecrackers are replaced by claustrophobic images and sinister items that portend death.
Third, the juxtaposition of the parents’ caring behavior to their children’s eerie lack of emotion emphasizes the dehumanization caused by an over-mechanized world. George and Lydia converse with each other and display emotion; in contrast, Wendy and Peter appear robotic when they first arrive home “with bright blue eyes” and speak in unison. They act like to be co-conspirators:
“There’s no Africa in the nursery,” said Peter simply.
…
“I don’t remember any Africa,” said Peter to Wendy. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Run see and come tell.”
She did as he told her.
When the children do talk to their parents, they remain disconnected.
Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor at his mother. “You aren’t going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?”
They also speak formally, almost like strangers, and threateningly. Peter “sharply” asks his father why the nursery might be locked up. Then he ominously states,
“I wouldn’t want the nursery locked up,” said Peter coldly. “Ever.”
Finally, the juxtaposition of the children’s protest at the nursery being turned off and their joy at it being turned back on is jarring:
Wendy was still crying and Peter joined her again. “Just a moment, just one moment, just another moment of nursery,” they cried.
When George gives in and agrees to turn the nursery back on,
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” sang the children, smiling with wet faces.
The manipulative youngsters seem to be possessed. Following their parents' gruesome death, Wendy and Peter’s eerie calmness emphasizes their evil natures and the immoral, dehumanizing effects of modern technology.