Use of Foreshadowing, Allusion, and Irony in Ray Bradbury´s The Veldt

“The Veldt” is a short and twisting story written in 1950 by Ray Bradbury about the Hadley family who lives in a futuristic world that ends up “ruining human relationships and destroying the minds of children” (Hart). The house they live in is no ordinary home, Bradbury was very creative and optimistic when predicting future technology in homes. This house does everything for the residence including tying shoes, making food, and even rocking them to sleep. The favourite room of the children, Peter and Wendy, is the forty by forty foot nursery. This room’s setting reacts to the children’s thoughts. Everything from the temperature to the ground’s texture responds to the environment Wendy and Peter imagine, and in this case, an African veldt. All the advanced technology is intended for positive uses, but instead, becomes negative, consumerism catches up, and does harm by coming to life, and killing Lynda and Bob Hadley. Ray Bradbury develops his theme that consumerism is a negative concept, in his short story, “The Veldt” through the use of foreshadowing, allusion, and irony.

Throughout “The Veldt”, clues of what will happen next occur constantly in the form of foreshadowing. All the forms of foreshadowing are negative and ultimately lead up to the death of the Hadley parents. Three different incidences of foreshadowing are the familiar screams, carcasses being devoured, and possessions found out of place. Examples include “And suddenly they realized why those other screams had sounded familiar”, “They've just been eating," said Lydia. "I don't know what”, “There were drops of saliva on it, it had been chewed, and there were blood smears on both sides”. Kattelman says in her Critical Essay, “The opening definitely lets the reader...

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...the negative concept of consumerism. They lead up to the inevitable death of Bob and Lydia Hadley, enhance the setting in the future utopian room with negative uses of technology, and how ironic it is to have children taking so much control over the parents using the resources at their fingertips. All the technology in that house was made, intended to be used for good uses and to make the lives of humans easier, but instead, made Wendy and Peter turn on their own family members. Like Caldwell said, “The dangers associated with unresolved parent and child conflict is an important facet of this cautionary tale”. Bob and Lydia’s roles as parents had been almost completely removed from the children’s lives, and replaced with machinery. Ray Bradbury has emphasized the theme of negative consumerism throughout “The Veldt” by the usage of foreshadowing, allusion, and irony.