Where Does the Family Plan to Move in the Veldt
Study Guide
The Veldt Detailed Summary
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Detailed Summary
- Female parent Lydia is worried about the nursery, which is her superpower in this story. Worrying, not the nursery. She tells married man George about her concerns.
- Since the kitchen of the future is making dinner for the family, the parents have some costless fourth dimension for a prissy chat.
- So they check out the nursery, which gives our narrator tons of time for description.
- We hear about their "Happylife Habitation," which is expensive. It also does things automatically for them, like feeding and clothing them. Perchance it's something like this contraption from Wallace and Gromit.
- The plant nursery was also very expensive. But it'southward amazing because it allows all sorts of virtual reality travel thanks to "odorophonics" (17) and "mental tape" (37). (In other words, Bradbury but makes up stuff that sounds proficient. Good for him and see "Genre" for a quick discussion on that habit.)
- Right now the nursery is ready to "African veldt." If y'all're curious, Shmoopers, the veldt refers to grasslands, complete with lions and gazelles, and everything the light touches.
- Lydia is nervous well-nigh those virtual lions. Oh, you know those 1950s hysterical housewives—ever worried about lions! She even thinks she heard a scream.
- After the lions cease eating… something, they come up hunt the parents. George basically thinks "what fun for everyone" (28) but Lydia thinks "Lions! Yikes!" (Disclaimer: that's not an actual quote.)
- The parents run out of the room, with Lydia in tears and George laughing. The best marriages usually become like that, with one person laughing and the other crying, right?
- George tries to at-home Lydia by reminding her that the nursery isn't real. " Information technology's all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia" (37).
- But George promises to tell the kids to terminate hanging out in Africa. What fun place will they visit next? The Civil War? The French Revolution?
- George doesn't desire to lock the kids out of the nursery. If he does, he's worried they'll throw tantrums and non help their parents with the tech stuff that parents never seem able to do. (Like VCRs and Wi-Fi networks and getting TV shows downloaded straight into their brains.)
- Maybe y'all need a rest, says dad. (Note to cocky: "You lot need a rest" is almost never a helpful annotate.)
- Lydia disagrees: I need more piece of work, she says. We'd paraphrase it as: Oh, how I long to knit and sweep the house. But she's useless now, she says, considering "The firm is wife and female parent now, and nursemaid" (56). What'south Mama Lydia supposed to practise?
- Lydia thinks George is also depressed since he has footling to do, too.
- Plus she'south worried virtually the lions getting out of the nursery.
- Afterwards, the parents are enjoying a nice habitation-cooked dinner. (Literally, the abode cooked the dinner for them.) Peter and Wendy are off at a carnival.
- George thinks about the nursery and how it responds to telepathic signals. If that'due south truthful, why is there so much death in that African veldt?
- Respond: the kids are thinking about death, which George supposes is natural: "Long before you knew what death was you were wishing information technology on someone else" (67). Um, false.
- George checks the nursery, which is still fix to human being-eating lions in Africa. Too, he hears another scream. There certain are a lot of screams coming from the nursery these days. We hope that'southward not foreshadowing or something.
- Over the concluding year, the kids had done lots of unlike fantasy worlds (see "Shout-Outs"), only for the last month it's been all Africa all the fourth dimension.
- The room should answer to thoughts, correct? So George tries to think the lions away. But it doesn't work for him.
- Now Lydia is worried that the kids tampered with the nursery, since Peter is then smart. (And Wendy? Well, she sure is a adept follower.
- The kids come home, full of water ice cream and hot dogs, which isn't a criminal offense, right?
- George and Lydia enquire about Africa, but Peter and Wendy are all like "whatever are you talking about, beloved parents?" In other words, they're playing information technology cool.
- Wendy runs off to cheque the nursery when Peter tells her to, even though their dad tells her non to.
- Wendy comes back to say it isn't Africa, so the whole family unit goes to check, and it isn't.
- The nursery is at present set to a gentle forest scene from the book Green Mansions. (See "Shout-Outs.")
- George sends the kids to bed.
- To get at that place, they use some sort of pneumatic tube, which used to exist how people imagined the future.
- He and then finds an one-time wallet of his that has clearly been chewed on by lions. How do fake lions chew real wallets? Unclear.
- Dad locks the nursery. Practiced move, Papa.
- In bed, George and Lydia worry about the nursery: information technology's supposed to assistance people piece of work off their neuroses, but maybe it's but feeding into their kids' negative feelings.
- Well, says Lydia, the kids accept been acting weird since you forbade them from going to New York a calendar month ago. Hmmm… a month ago. Isn't that virtually how long the kids have been playing on the veldt?
- George agrees to become David McClean to come up wait at the nursery since he'south a psychologist.
- And it won't be a moment too soon, because the kids seem to have broken in that night and prepare it to Africa already.
- The parents hear 2 screams, and Lydia says the screams sound familiar.
- She and George are so nervous that they take trouble falling asleep even though their beds are rocking them to sleep (150). Hey, can Shmoop get one of those?
- Later, George and Peter talk nearly the nursery. George says he's thinking near turning off the room. Or maybe the whole firm.
- They'll alive like primitive human being, without even Netflix streaming.
- Merely Peter doesn't want the nursery turned off, then he threatens his dad a little. Just a little.
- Bluntly, the idea of turning off the firm sounds terrible to Peter. He doesn't want to have to exercise things, like necktie his shoes and castor his teeth. "I don't want to exercise anything merely look and listen and scent; what else is at that place to practice?" (167).
- Later, David McClean comes to bank check out the firm. The last time he was in the plant nursery it seemed ordinary, with just the usual amount of paranoia and hate from the kids.
- (And just to run into if we've been paying attention, at that place's another scream from the nursery.)
- David examines the plant nursery and says very scientifically that he has a bad feeling nigh it.
- Meet, the nursery was originally designed to assist kids, only these kids are conspicuously just using it to harp on their bad blood with their parents.
- George says that he did turn off the room a month agone to show that he wanted the kids to do their homework (200). (So starting time he says they can't go to New York and now he's telling them to exercise their homework. Who does he think he is, their father? Oh, wait.)
- Only David says the trouble isn't just the room. The problem is that George and Lydia are bad parents. (Wow, this is going really well.)
- According to David, the kids love the room more than than they beloved their parents. Especially since the room does stuff for them.
- Earlier they exit, David finds a scarf of Lydia's, lion-chewed. Which raises one serious question: why has no one made a LOLcats adaptation of this story?
- George turns off the house and the kids freak out.
- At some signal, David leaves, but plans to come back to accept the Hadleys to the aerodrome for their business firm-less holiday.
- But George is firmly committed to the whole Luddite business, maxim that these gadgets have been preventing them from really living (235).
- Since the kids are freaking out, Lydia says they tin can at least have ane last visit to the nursery before they all go on vacation. (To Iowa of all places. Maybe they're going to encounter the future birthplace of James T. Kirk.)
- While packing, the parents hear Peter and Wendy shouting for them from the nursery.
- So, of course, the parents rush in.
- When they're in the nursery, George and Lydia find that a) information technology's set to Africa, b) their children aren't in that location, c) there are lions, and d) the door slammed shut behind them.
- Not. Practiced.
- When the lions approach, the parents scream. And that'southward when they realize why the other screams sound familiar (263). It was them screaming all along. Dun dun dun.
- And then…
- … we don't see what happens. (Run across "What's Upward with the Ending" for more on that.)
- David McClean comes back to take the family to the airport. Iowa or bust!
- Only George and Lydia have gone missing. Peter and Wendy, meanwhile, are enjoying a picnic on the African veldt, while the lions are eating… something.
- In a pretty killer concluding line, Wendy offers McClean a cup of tea, proving how adorably civilized she is.
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Source: https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-veldt/summary/detailed-summary
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