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What three details in "The Veldt" suggest a futuristic setting and how does this setting influence the characters?

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"The Veldt" features a futuristic setting with three significant details: the high-tech nursery that creates realistic environments, the house's automation of daily tasks, and its awareness of the occupants. This advanced technology influences the characters by diminishing parental authority, as the children become independent and empowered by the house's capabilities. The parents, particularly Lydia, feel obsolete, leading to tension and fear when technology replaces human roles in caring and decision-making.

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  1. The nursery of the Hadley's automated home is the most expensively appointed. This setting in the story is richly described as: "an African veldt . . . in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling . . . a deep sky with a hot yellow sun." The room replicates a African grassland as a playscape for the Hadley children. There, the children can entertain themselves for hours, which leads to their ultimately ominous independence because their parents relinquish their control to technology. Lydia is right to be frightened by the realism, but George assures her "it’s all dimensional, superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens. It’s all odorophonics and sonics."
  2. Lydia is also less enthusiastic than George about the large role the house has assumed in their lives. She proposes a vacation from it...

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  1. by shutting down the technology and asks George, "Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can?" Though she concedes that she cannot compete with the house's technology, she is troubled that she has become superfluous as a mother.
  2. When George sends Peter and Wendy to bed, "they went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms." At this point, George still has control over them, and the children can do nothing to resist the programming of the house outside the nursery.
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The HappyLife home is a marvel of futuristic technological conveniences. First, there is the Nursery, of course, which is a huge panoramic video projection room that creates incredibly realistic simulations of nature, including smells and ambient temperatures. The house also seems to be aware of its occupants, sensing their movements and turning lights on and off as appropriate. The dining room table produces all their meals for them, down to providing the ketchup. The house literally does all the work of living for the Hadleys. 

The house affects all the characters. Because the house provides everything, the parents have little authority over their children. The children, in their turn, find the house empowering and resent their parents' attempt to assert authority over them. This comes to a head when the father threatens to turn the house "off." The conclusion of the story suggests that the house has finally made parents obsolete.

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