THROUGH RAY BRADBURY: A LITERARY CRITICISM OF THE VELDT

INTRODUCTION

Literature has no resolute meaning and its definitions have varied over time. 1
Nevertheless, it is a part of our life and one of the things that make us human. Mario Klarer
had expanded the definition of literature as a cultural and historical experience where the
creation and acknowledgment conditions can be delved into. In the factors of literature
determination, Mario put the cultural and historical context as the focal point. Mario also
uttered that literature was the proof of humanity’s trace which is left through one’s creative
expression. Thus, in giving creativity a going-over, visual imagery is of the essence.2

Literature gives exposure to the character’s experience within the narrative. Various
exposure shed light on how the main characters act, talk, or ponder. These experiences are
generally wrapped in differing kinds of literature such as novels, poems, fables, legends,
short stories, etc. One of the aforementioned pieces of literature in the form of a short story is
called “The Veldt”, a science-fiction horror written by the late American author Ray
Bradbury back in 1950 under the original title “The World the Children Made”. Ray
Bradbury himself had participated in the Los Angeles Science Fiction League (LASFL) and
grew his attachment toward science fiction through it. LASFL also established his connection
to a humongous collection of future extraordinary individuals whose minds generated science
fiction, comic books, and figments of fantasy that soon to be stretched out across the world. 3
Already spent his teenage years in Los Angeles, it should come as no surprise that he was
given a close acquaintance with Hollywood as he roamed around from various studios to
another with his trusty roller-skate collecting movie stars’ autographs. After his lengthy
illness took his life on June 5th 2012 at the age of 91, people have seemed to continue
expressing their interest in adapting his literary works to the big screen, albeit not always
successfully. The characters in “The Veldt” were brought to life in the same year of his death
on a music video dedicated to Bradbury produced by a Canadian DJ.

The short story is set in an automated house called “the Happylife Home” where an
ordinary family of four consists of two parents and two children lives. The story depicts the
parents’ concern with the lack of their parenting role as it is being taken over by their highly
automated home, and thus forming their children to be disobedient and obstreperous as a
1
Leitch, V., et. al, (2001), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, New York: Norton, pp. 28
2
Klarer, M., (2005), An Introduction to Literary Studies, Oxford: Taylor & Francis, pp. 1-2
3
Eller, J. (2011), Becoming Ray Bradbury, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 54
result of being spoiled by the technology. The two children – Peter and Wendy – mostly
spend their time in a nursery that displays images on crystal screens, odorophonics systems,
and sounds so pristine the viewers can’t help but feel them as if it’s the real thing. These
projections are created based on the imagination of the viewers. This was installed in the
nursery for the purpose of allowing the children to develop their own world creatively and
play in it while in the comfort of their homes. Peter and Wendy grow their attachment to it to
the point that it becomes unhealthy. As the parents struggle with their life of automation
dependency, they also become troubled at a particular view in the nursery which seems to be
displayed more often, which is a veldt in Africa where lions can be seen feasting upon their
unidentifiable prey and drinking from the wells. Even more strange occurrence is the
occasional screams that are strangely familiar coming from inside the nursery, and they also
find the replicate of their personal belongings there. The parents then consult a psychologist
called McLean because they wonder why their children are so interested in these disturbing
images of death. McLean then berates both parents for leaving their parenting responsibility
to the machines and gives them advice to detach the children from the automated
environment. The father tries to follow the advice, then encourage them to turn off the house
and move somewhere else. This also gives them the chance to not be automation-dependent
anymore and learn to be more self-sufficient. As expected, both the children are strongly
opposing the idea, expressing their disagreement by throwing tantrums, screaming and crying
as they beg their parents to give them one last chance to play in the nursery for one minute.
The father refused, but eventually give in due to the influence from the mother. As the
parents get dressed, the children call them and tell them to come quick in the nursery. When
the parents rush to see what’s going on, the children slam the door and lock their parents in
with the pride of lions rumbling and roaring in their throats. The parents screamed as the
lions charged toward them, and they realized why the screams in the nursery sounded
familiar. Shortly after, McLean comes in the nursery to fetch the children and finds them
playing inside, McLean saw the lions fighting and clawing carcasses under the shady trees,
which are implied to be the parents, but McLean doesn’t seem to realize it. The children just
looked at him and smiled as Wendy offers him a cup of tea.

This essay will figure out the relationship between the theme of “The Veldt” towards
Ray Bradbury’s biography and describe its influence on the short story’s content using
biographical approach. According to Frank Ellis, biographical criticism involves the
connection between a written work and the biographical experiences of the writer. 4 Actual
events that an author experienced some time in the past may put an effect in influencing their
point of view toward something and expressing that in their literary works. But in spite of
that, there was an argument from the past century among the great critics and readers that an
author should be able to separate their experience from their literary work in order to make it
truly noteworthy. Therefore it is not essential to acknowledge the experience of an author in
order to possess a genuine understanding of a prominent work.

DISCUSSION

Biographical criticism aspires to shine on a more thorough definition of themes,

frictions, characters, environments, and literary implications based on the author’s own issue
or conflict. As a book written by Brian Roberts stated, it is necessary to often take a
pragmatical orientation that relies on the resemblances in approaches and procedures if the
critics conduct biographical research.5 Also, in order to conduct it more thoroughly, the
critics should utilize the biographical information to comprehend the deductive and
contextual levels of the work; study what the author believes, relate those systems of belief to
their work, and express how the correlation reflects to the work’s subjects and themes in
words

“The Veldt” is one of the stories written by Ray Bradbury that features children as
prominent characters. What should be particularly noted is the way how these children’s
imaginations unfold and the fact that the children take them seriously even more than their
own real parents. Ray portrays the children in the story as individuals who are very interested
in the figment concept of death and how it concerned the father. As quoted in the story:

“Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children’s minds and
created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The
children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun — sun. Giraffes — giraffes. Death and
death.
That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table bad cut for him. Death
thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death thoughts.”
Not too far down in the story, the mother is also portrayed to have the same thinking
pattern of the father. When the father was shown to be snapped as he sent out his thoughts to
change the images of the veldt to another — more childlike content — to no avail, the

4
Ellis, F. H. (2012). Gray’s Elegy: The Biographical Problem in Literary Criticism. PMLA. 66 (6): 971-1008
5
Roberts, B. (2002). Biographical Research, United Kingdom: Open University Press, pp. 8
mother deduced that “because the children have thought about Africa and lions and killing so
many days that the room’s in a rut.” and the father said that it was possible.

The portrayal of how the children think in the story is based on what Ray Bradbury
believes to be an accurate representation of what actual children are supposed to be fascinated
of. This was shown in an interview with Bradbury conducted by Pierre Berton in 1966, Pierre
asked Bradbury why Halloween becomes Bradbury’s favorite day. Bradbury answered that
he likes “the rawness and the likeness and the excitement of death, which went with the older
vision of Halloween”, then Pierre responded with:

PIERRE: The “excitement of death” is an odd phrase to use.

RAY BRADBURY: Yes, it is. But children are fascinated by it.
PIERRE: By death?
RAY BRADBURY: Absolutely! They hunger for knowledge about it, and that’s why horror
films have been so successful over the years—not only with children but with older people
too.6
This personal thinking is important to determine how Bradbury views children and
affects his perspective of children in his work. Another example of this is shown in the other
part of the story where the father was shown lamenting about his children that they live for
the nursery, and how his son threw tantrum when the father once locked the nursery for even
a few hours as a punishment. The behavior of these children is also based on Bradbury’s
perspective as noted by his 1975 interview with Shel Dorf when Bradbury was asked about
his life when he was young, Bradbury responded:

I suppose not much different. I’ve always lived at the top of my hysteria, as I put it.
Enthusiasm. Delirium. I could never wait for things. This is a constant thing with a heck of a
lot of children anyway. They just feel steamed up if they don’t get a thing on a particular day;
or if they don’t experience a particular thing, it’s the end of the world.7

Bradbury’s other stories such as “Zero Hour” and “The Rocket” shows two opposition
of worlds in children and adults which could inevitably lead into conflict. But in “The Veldt”,
there are actually two conflicts; children against adults, and human against technology. The
former conflict may be seen as alarming as the latter. It was implied that the children in “The
Veldt” think they are joining forces with technology as the son shouts “Don’t let Father kill
everything!” at the ceiling. However, they are in fact also the victims of technology just as
much as their parents with a much less gruesome fate but ill-fated nevertheless. The children
never considered their parents as an ally even once because of their lack of parenting and
technological dependence. According to another related research by Saputro, parents are an
6
Aggelis, S. L. (2003). Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Florida: Florida State University. pp. 25
7
Ibid, pp. 56
important role for children because a close relationship with both parents is a key to their
growing mental conditions, their emotion stability, and their general wellbeing.8

Bradbury also warned against blind consumerism in “The Veldt”. At the year this
story was written, the market for ready-to-eat meals and kitchen appliances were booming.
“The Veldt” is a representation of a grim world where consumerism has been integrated too
far into the daily life of the Hadley family. This theory was further supported by Seed who
wrote that the Veldt “satirizes the consumerist ethic of an automated house, which displaces
the parents from any active functions in the household”.9

Bradbury and his views on parenting and consumerism further emphasized when
Bradbury later asked about the critics of horror stories who perceives them as harmful to be
consumed by children, his answer was:

“....That doesn’t mean that all horror stories or all horror films are automatically good. There
are some that are fantastically vulgar and poorly done, and I would imagine they might be
harmful or destructive to children under a certain age. So, as a responsible parent, you have
to save certain of these things as experiences to be gone through at a slightly later age...
.....But there’s a lot of individual decision that has to be made here. And we as parents have
to decide which children at what time are ready for what kind of information. We become our
own censors, which is the way any really good society works. We shouldn’t have to have
these things put in from outside. We should be capable of showing judgment on our own.”10
The children in “The Veldt” story represent the downward spiral Bradbury saw
growing in American population. When the interactions between individuals are
encompassed by decadence due to technological influence, society begins to crumble and set
the darker side of humanity free.

CONCLUSION

The short story of “The Veldt” colligate the worlds of adults and children and present
them as two separate things, namely imagination and rational. “The Veldt” emphasizes the
power of imagination in children and how it can lead to destruction if not controlled enough
by the role of parenting. This representation of children in Bradbury’s work is suitable with
how he states his opinion on children in recorded interviews. It is also interesting to note that
the differences between the imaginary realms of children and rational world of adults also

8
Saputro, L. (2020). Virginia Woolf’s Perspectives of Death in Woolf’s “A Haunted House”. Yogyakarta:
Universitas Sanata Dharma. pp. 39
9
Seed, D. (2015). Ray Bradbury. Modern Masters of Science Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 16
10
Aggelis, S. L. (2003). Op. cit. pp. 61
play a salient role in the children-adults conflict in the short story, preventing the parents
from realizing the danger.

Bradbury established himself as a thinker who explored American values, concerns,

and conflicts of society in many of his literary works. This particular critic essay only writes
a small portion of one material out of many that he could provide to explore the complexity
of his works. Surely, his works are open to interpretation and unbarred for further exploration
for new generations of scholars into their intellectual contents and literary needs.

REFERENCES

Aggelis, S. L. Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Florida: Florida State University, 2003

Eller, J. Becoming Ray Bradbury, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011

Ellis, F. H. “Gray’s Elegy: The Biographical Problem in Literary Criticism.” PMLA. 66.6
(2012): 971-1008

Klarer, M. An Introduction to Literary Studies, Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2005

Roberts, B. Biographical Research, United Kingdom: Open University Press, 2002

Saputro, L. Virginia Woolf’s Perspectives of Death in Woolf’s “A Haunted House”.

Yogyakarta: Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2020.

Seed, D. Ray Bradbury. Modern Masters of Science Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. 2015

Leitch, V., Cain, W. E., Finke, L. A., McGowan, J., Sharpley-Whiting, T. D., Williams, J. J.
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, New York: Norton, 2001