PLOT

The Hadley family lives in an automated house called "The Happylife Home," filled
with machines that do everything for them from cooking meals, to clothing them, to
rocking them to sleep. The two children, Peter and Wendy, are fascinated with the
"nursery," a virtual reality room that is able to connect with the mind of the visitor
telepathically to reproduce any place they imagine.
The parents, George and Lydia, soon wonder if there is something wrong with their
way of life. Lydia tells George, that she feels as if she has been replaced for the
house. They are also confused that the nursery is stuck on an African setting, with
lions in the distance, eating the remains of some sort of animal. There they also
find recreations of their personal belongings, Georges old wallet and his wifes
scarf, with blood stains and the lions saliva on it and hear strangely familiar
screams. Wondering why their children are so concerned with this scene of death,
they decide to call a psychologist.
The psychologist, David McClean, suggests they turn off the house, move to the
country, and learn to be more self-sufficient. The children, completely reliant on the
nursery, beg their parents to let them have one last visit. The nursery has replaced
their real parents. They live for the nursery. The parents agree to let them spend
one more minute there.
George and Lydia are upstairs changing when they hear their children calling for
them. They run into the nursery and the children, having set a trap, lock them
inside. George and Lydia look on as the lions begin to advance towards them.
They scream. And suddenly they realized why the screams sounded so familiar.
When David comes by to look for George and Lydia, he finds the children enjoying
lunch on the veldt and sees the lions eating something in the distance.

ANALYSIS OF THE PLOT

Exposition
Lydia and George Hadley live in a Happy-life Home, a technological marvel that
automatically tends to their every need. It dresses them, cooks the food, brushes
their teeth, and even rocks them to sleep. The house also contains a high-tech
nursery. It is a virtual reality room that Peter and Wendy, George and Lydia's
children, are obsessed with it. The room depicts everything they imagine with
lifelike sounds, sights and smells.

Action
Conflict forces that determinate the action:
Man vs Man
In the story the conflict is between the parents and their children. The parents start
to get worried when the room seems to be stuck in an African veldt with lions
feeding in the background, which makes the mother particularly nervous as the
scene in the nursery becomes a little too real. Lydia and George are concerned
about their children spending too much time in the nursery, watching these
dangerous creatures, and thinking about death. In addition, the parents keep
finding blood stained items belonging to them and hearing familiar screams coming
from the nursery.

Man vs Technology
The parents begin to realize how useless the feel, because the children are being
raised by the machines of the house.

The Happylife Home has reduced the Hadley family to beings who are passive
consumers of entertainment. Peter and Wendy only seem to care about continuing
to stimulate their senses; they want to interact with technology, not with other
people, not even with their parents. This illustrates how estranged the children are
from their parents and from human interaction in general. The house seems to take
a parental role with the kids: it keeps them safe and entertained. So when George
and Lydia try to regain authority by setting some rules (like denying them to go to
New York by rocket, or threaten them to lock the nursery if they didnt do their
homework) Wendy and Peter start to resent them.
Conflict
George and Lydia talk about how spoiled the children are and how disobedient
they have become in spite of having given them everything they ever wanted.
After they begin to realize what a negative impact is having the technological
house (especially the nursery) on their children, they start considering turning off
the house and taking a family holiday.
Action (The action is the development of the conflict.)
When inquired about conjuring an African Veldt in the nursery, the children feign
ignorance, insisting they havent created an African veldt. Wendy runs to the
nursery, and when she comes back, announces that there is no Africa. The four of
them walk together to the nursery and see a beautiful forest. George is suspicious
and locks the room in order to prevent them to go there again. However, the
children break into the nursery that very night.
After Peter threatens his father, George decides that the matter has gone too far
and calls his friend, David McClean, a psychologist, to examine the nursery. David
observes that the veldt doesnt feel good. He advises George to turn off the room
and send the children to him for treatment. He says the room has become a
dangerous channel for the childrens destructive thoughts. Due to this, the parents
decide not only to turn off the nursery, but also the whole house and to leave on a

family holiday. The children have a fit and jump all over the house crying. Finally,
the parents agree to let them have one final visit in the nursery as they begin to
pack their bags to move away from the mechanical house while waiting for David

McCleans arrival so that they can fly to a new life in Iowa.

Climax
The climax it is said to be the turning point of the story, when the characters act on
their conflict, when the conflict of the plot is resolved.
We thought the climax of this story is when, upon hearing Wendy and Peter calling
for them, George and Lydia run into the nursery, into the veldt, but their children
arent inside. Then the door of the nursery slams shut, trapping George and Lydia
in the veldt. The parents realize that their children have set a trap. As they bang
against the door, they hear the sounds of approaching lions on all sides. They
scream, and suddenly realize that the screams they have been hearing in the
nursery were their own.
Resolution
In the aftermath of the story, David arrives at the nursery doorway, and
sees Wendy and Peter eating a picnic in the veldt. He asks the children
where George and Lydia are, and the children reply that theyll be coming soon. In
the distance, David sees lions eating. In the quiet of the veldt, Wendy offers David
a cup of tea.
We think that the end of this story signals the end of a generation and the birth of a
new one: a generation in which selfishness, cruelty, and a lack of emotion induced
by excessive technology replace the love, care, and understanding that are crucial
to our shared humanity.

The title
When this story was first published, the title was The World the Children Made,
which helped the reader focus on the children and their unsettling behaviour.
However, the title was changed when it was republished in 1951 in The Illustrated
Man. Now the story is called The Veldt which makes the reader focus not only on
the disturbing children but also on what they made. This shows us an imaginary
world that is the product of the children's horrifying imaginations. They are thinking
about the veldt, a wild place without rules, free of adults, with dangerous lions on it,
which makes the reader feel disturbed from the very beginning of the story.

The end
At the end of the story, when the parents are locked inside the nursery with lions
nearby, the reader doesnt know exactly what happens with the parents. The most
probable option is that the lions kill the parents.
The author Ray Bradbury carefully sidesteps the question of how do fake lions kill
real people? However, throughout the story the author gives us hints that the lions
can affect real tangible objects like Georges wallet or Lydias scarf. Also, at the
beginning of the story, after George and Lydia escape from the nursery, Lydia asks
if the lions can get out and the door trembles "as if something had jumped against
it from the other side". This gives us a suggestion that the lions can have a physical
impact on the world outside their virtual one.
But because Bradbury doesn't explicit say what happens, the ending is open to
some interpretation. In fact in one radio version, Dr McClean reports that the
parents haven't really been eaten, but now the whole family needs therapy.

But whatever happens to the parents, we know one thing for certain: the kids win.
And when we see them at the end, they are enjoying a picnic at the same time as
the lions are enjoying their meal.