What is the mood of "The Veldt"?

On one level, the mood of "The Veldt" is clearly one of fear and paranoia. We can sense this from the very first lines of the story:

"George, I wish you'd look at the nursery."
"What's wrong with it?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then."
"I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it."
"What would a psychologist want with a nursery?"
"You know very well what he'd want."

Clearly, the mother is upset about something. What we discover is that she is afraid that the technologically advanced house they have bought, and specifically the nursery, a kind of giant three dimensional TV set, has undermined their authority as parents with their two children, Wendy and Peter. There is a sense that the children know something the adults do not. There is something unsettling about the scenes of Africa they find in the nursery. Maybe Peter has tampered with the Nursery, so that the parents cannot control it?

This mood of paranoia is amplified when the parents confront the children about the nursery, and Peter flatly denies that they had anything to do with Africa. It is amplified still more when the father says he is thinking about turning the house off, Peter responds by saying "I don't think you'd better consider it any more, Father." Are the children becoming smarter and more powerful than the parents?

On another level, the story has a darkly comic mood to it. If we think of the story as a satire of the nuclear family, we can see how the efforts of the parents to "provide" for their children actually afford the children the means to supercede parental authority. Since the whole point of raising children is to make their lives better, we can see in the parent's reaction to their kids that 1) they don't understand them very well and 2) maybe their house has more to say about them and their desire to be "babied" than it does about their care for their children. In this case, Bradbury seems to suggest that maybe Wendy and Peter are the real adults in the story. 

What is the mood, author's purpose, and sensory language in "The Veldt"?

Sensory language is important in Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” (1950) because the world created by Mr. and Mrs. Hadley in their HappyLife Home is experienced wholly through a passive deployment of the senses. Gone is the “doing” aspect of experience; the parents and their two children, Wendy and Peter, live to watch, smell, and hear life go by. George and Lydia Hadley have built a home so full of creature comforts for their children, they don’t even have to walk up to their bedrooms to sleep.

“Go to bed,” he said to the children. ... They went off to the air tube, where a wind blew them like brown leaves up to their sleeping rooms.

Thus, the most active forces in the lives of the Hadleys are the machines which cook their food on autopilot and rock them to sleep each night, and the disastrous inner workings of the children’s minds. In their HappyLife Home, the children don’t even have to tie their own shoes or brush their own hair. Instead, all of the children's energy is directed into the nursery, the crowning glory of their home, which has cost the Hadleys “half again as much as the rest of the house.”

The nursery is a sentient large space, surrounded by a three-dimensional screen on three sides. It can guess the thoughts and fantasies of its inhabitants and project them on screen in glorious, photo-realistic detail. With delightful innocent forests filled with pretty birds and pegasi, the nursery has provided endless entertainment for the children and their parents for the longest time—but not any more. Something has changed.

Bored by the benign images of their early childhood, the children need increasingly violent, thrilling images to sustain their attention. Therefore, the nursery is stuck in a loop in a hot, sun-burnt African grassland so real the Hadleys can smell the meat off the mouth of the lions in the veldt. The sensory overload of the veldt alarms the parents and foreshadows both the mood and the message of the story.

Now hidden machines were beginning to blow a wind containing prepared smells toward the two people in the middle of the baked veldt. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the strong dried blood smell of the animals, the smell of dust like red pepper in the hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on soft grassy ground, the papery rustle of vultures.

In its bright, unrelenting violence, the grassland is so absorbing the children need it like addicts need a fix. By creating this sense-heavy world and removing their children from the spheres of “doing” and “feeling,” the Hadleys have scripted their own doom. The children are more attached to their nursery than they are to their own parents. In this aspect, Bradbury’s story, written in 1950, is prescient about the 21st-century dangers of screen addiction. When George Hadley suggests turning off the nursery to Peter so he can do something else, the boy coldly responds:

“I don’t want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?”

As the sensory details of the veldt become more realistic, so does the still, ominous mood of the story. It is almost as if the grassland’s vultures, lions, and sun are draining the life of the adults outside. For Wendy and Peter, the nursery represents existence itself, and therefore they react violently when their parents suggest shutting it down.

By the time the Hadleys realize the fissures in the perfect home they’ve created for their children, the lines between screen and reality have blurred completely. George finds one of his wallets in the nursery, wet with the spit of lions, while their friend, the psychologist David McClean discovers a blood-streaked scarf of Lydia’s. Often, George and Lydia hear familiar-sounding screams emanate from the nursery. The story suggests George and Lydia have already met their fate in the play performed in their children's psyche; their lived life is now just an echo of that final act. In the end, when the children lock their parents in the nursery, the sensory line between the veldt and the parents' reality melts away.

The lions were on three sides of them in the yellow veldt grass. They walked quietly through the dry grass, making long, deep rolling sounds in their throats. The lions! Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the beasts edging slowly forward, knees bent, tails in the air.

Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.

And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded familiar.

What effect does the imagery in "The Veldt" create for the reader?

Imagery in “The Veldt” effectively creates emotions of comfort, then suspense, fear, and horror in the reader. Various types of imagery (visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory) heighten the realism of this surreal world.

Initially, the house seems like a safe crib that pampers its inhabitants, the Hadleys. George and Lydia walk through an expensive, futuristic Happylife Home that

clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them. 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.

This passage includes text reminiscent of a gentle touch (e.g., “clothed,” “rocked them to sleep,” “sensitized,” “soft automaticity”) as well as placidity in sound (“sang,” “flicked,” “soft automaticity”). Creepily maternal, the house addresses their needs as if they were helpless infants that need to be appeased and shielded from hardship.

Imagery abruptly changes, however, as the parents enter their children’s playroom. Instead of childlike innocence, this room projects ominous foreboding. When George and Lydia step into the room, it appears empty and plain before eerily transforming into an African veldt.

The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun .… hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered on George Hadley’s upturned, sweating face.

Visual imagery creates an environment that contrasts the earlier safe interior. For example, the sky and sun convey outdoor brightness; grass, the water hole, and distant animals fill out this natural wilderness scene. Repetitive tactile details (e.g., the hot sun, baked soil, the hot straw, the hot air) build up oppressive heat that is hardly relieved by cool air around the water hole. Olfactory imagery further immerses the reader into this setting with body odors of animals and smells of grass, standing water, sod, and dust. Auditory imagery of blowing wind, thumping feet, and rustling wings complete the reader’s experience. Finally, the shadow of vultures cast onto George’s face creates suspense. The reader becomes alert and waits for something to happen.

Imagery of an impending lion attack generates genuine fear in both the characters and the reader. George and Lydia notice

lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that 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 yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.

Again, visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory imagery pull the reader into this frightening, charged scene of looming violence. Although George and Lydia narrowly escape the lion’s attack this time, disturbing images later foreshadow their ultimate and grisly deaths. First, George spots his wallet on the ground.

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.

Then, their friend David McClean finds Lydia’s bloody scarf on the floor. These horrifying images portend the children’s vengeful release of fierce, hungry lions on their parents in order to preserve their playroom. Imagery in the closing scene confirms their parents’ fates and foreshadows David’s death.

At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the shady trees.

He squinted at the lions with his hand tip to his eyes.

Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.

A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean’s hot face. Many shadows flickered. The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky.