Examples Of Foreshadowing In The Veldt

742 Words2 Pages

Note: text evidence is from an alternate version of the story linked here. Imagine living in a world where technology rules every aspect of your life, The Veldt is a short story by Ray Bradbury that takes place in the future where the mother and father of the Hadley family struggles with their technologically advanced home taking over their role as parents as their children become more and more unruly as a result of their lack of discipline. The nursery of the home, specially designed for the children, has crystal walls which can portray any scene the children may wish to see. The children eventually utilize this room to lead their parents into their ultimate demise, while the room portrays an African flat land better known as a veldt. In the …show more content…

Bradbury is extremely skillful in this craft move, careful to hint never too little but never too much. We see Bradbury use foreshadowing on page 8 with the ever so simple line, “Those screams – they sound familiar.“ This line by the mother of the family can easily be overlooked by readers, seen as a clever way to show paranoia. But with the parent’s final line on page 13 “And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded familiar.” We can see this was not an emphasis on paranoia, this was a clever use of foreshadowing. One of the the strongest uses of symbolism is the ever so technologically advanced nursery which can display any scene at just a simple request. In the story the parents refer to the nursery being stuck as an African veldt, this is a clear symbol of their children’s obsession with said veldt and overall defiance. We see an example of this on page 5 “Because the children have thought about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room’s stuck in a pattern it can’t get out of.” This is one of the more obvious uses of symbolism, yet this small quote adds such a deep layer of understanding with such few …show more content…

Author Bradbury utilizes tone in a unique way to further add emotion and glimpses of intent into “The Veldt”. A great example of this is on page 11 “Lydia, it’s off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies here and now. The more I see the mess we’ve put ourselves in, the more it sickens me. We’ve been thinking of our machine assisted selves for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!” The tone of this quote portrays fear, anger and even panic. The reader can see a moment of awareness, realization where just the severity of their situation comes to light. We can really see how fed up the father is on page 7 where he says “Who was it said, ‘Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally’? We’ve never lifted a hand. They’re unbearable – let’s admit

Open Document