The Veldt, by author Ray Bradbury, provided a truly inspired idea of a story, so utterly brilliant, that it even gave us insight 60 years into the future. This short story, having been first published late in the year of 1950, was received, at first, to be written purely by fictional imagination. At this time and age, television was only first beginning to be brought and introduced into the American home. The idea that some futuristic technological device could be addictive to a pair of young children was not even considered to ever become such a reality.

The story follows the lives of a relatively wealthy family who purchase a house, which has the ability to make their lives significantly easier by doing everything for the family. From tying their shoes, to giving the children a bath, this house is completely self sufficient and allows the owners to experience a life in which they do not need to perform unnecessary and otherwise time consuming tasks. The key feature in this house happens to be a special nursery for the children, Peter and Wendy. The nursery has an ability, which is out of the boundaries of possibility, to portray the children’s thoughts on to the walls of the nursery through images, sounds, and smells. Being in the nursery becomes an all-consuming activity for the children and it becomes increasingly necessary in their lives. Once the parents, George and Lydia, become concerned with the children’s need, for what is essentially just a room, they attempt locking the nursery for certain periods of time as a form of punishment. This causes the children to become greedy, deceiving, and rebellious against their parents. They come to believe that their parents are no longer necessary in their existence, and that the nursery is of greater value and love to them. Once their only desire has been threatened to disappear forever, they are forced into a position of choosing, between the nursery and their own parents. In the end, they make a shocking choice that their adoration for the nursery is superlative to that of their parents. Through Bradbury’s contempt usage of satire, we discover the underlying message of how technology can take over our lives and compel us to be lead to make drastic decisions.

For many at the time, it was a completely preposterous idea to become so reliant on any sort of technology and to become so closely affixed on such things. But in modern society this is very much so an unclouded reality, Bradbury’s visions of the future were not very far off. Children, and adults alike have become so addicted to technology, that they are not satisfied with life when they lack their phone or laptop. With no real knowledge that this could happen to reality, the author was able to infer the slow takeover of technology and society’s reliance on it. Our world inevitably progressed into a modern day version of a fiction story.