Imagery, Metaphor, and Foreshadowing in Bradbury’s "The Veldt"

Ray Bradbury is known for his highly imaginative short stories and novels that blend a poetic style, nostalgia for childhood, social criticism and awareness. Bradbury’s style uses unique metaphors and similes, which stood out in comparison to the utilitarian work that dominated pulp magazine writing. One of the main themes of his writings is that technology, while designed to make our lives easier, actually threatens our humanity.

Nowadays, technology plays an very important place. It makes people able to shop at home, keep connection with our friends easier. Long story short, people now cannot live without technology. The family in the story bought a high-technology nursery infantalized them and kill them all. Through “The Veldet”, written by Ray Brabury, the author uses foreshadowing, imagery, and metaphor to tell readers that technology is useful, but also harmful.

Through the utilize of foreshadowing, the author tells the two parents heard a scream that heard familiar, but till end they did not find out it is their scream. “ ‘ Did you hear that scream?’”(The Veldt 2) ,the wife asks her husband, but did not get an answer for yes. While the story closed to end, before they were eaten by lions, they figured out the scream is actually theirs, the two children image that they are killed by the lions. The lions were supposed to be only 3D or 4D but not be realized, the power of the technology is too strong, that make children’s dream come true, and kill the parents. Technology is not like human, they do not think, behave like a person. It makes us live easier, as in a good way in the story, we can enjoy beautiful views over the world while we do not even leave our house. Like nuclear power, it is able to produce much more electricity than fossil fuel, and it do not pollute environment a lot, however, if we make a nuclear bomb, it can cause genocide.

Also, the author uses imagery to claim the technology can let people fell fake things real, but people will not feel it. It is paralyzing people’s brain. The two parents find a old wallet of the husband, and “He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass and there were blood smears on both sides.” (The Veldt 5). Readers all know that is impossible that it has bloody smell since no one get hurt, that is the nursery make them fell the smell, through paralyzing people’s brain and make illusion. So that we cannot tell what is right and what is wrong. In SAO, an anime, the games allows you do everything, thus some criminal, kills character in the game, and murder the player in the real life so that make him a legend. He thought the game is real life. It an anime though, but if it happened, in real life, who should people blame, the criminal or the technology?

To use metaphor to stand the author’s idea that technology elongated distance between people virtually. According to “That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid.”(The Veldt 3), which said by the mother, the nursery had done everything that a mother should does, and even batter, faster. That makes the mother no longer belong to this house, to the family, as she have too much time to think, but nothing to do everyday. Therefore, while everything done by technology, distances between people are enlarged. People are not so closed to each like before. For example, we used to walk or ride or whatever to get to a friend’s house to visit them, but now, we have facebook, twitter, skype and of tool can make video call. It is convenient to connect them though, but always not fell as warm as people talk face to face.

By using foreshadowing, imagery, and metaphor in the short story when parents find the scream belong to them, the wallet is bloody but no one get hurt, and nursery is a better mother, the author tries to tell us like Sword of Damocles (Damocles think as with a great man of power and prestige, dithyrambs dionysius, really lucky. Dithyrambs dionysius, proposed the identity of the exchange with him one day, that he could try to head's fate. The dinner in the evening, Damocles very enjoys the feeling of becoming king. When the end of the dinner, he looked up and did not notice the throne above only with a horsehair hanging sword. He immediately lost interest in food and handsome, and request tyrant and administrative him, he didn't want to get so lucky. The sword of Damocles is usually used to symbolize the legend, the representative has a strong strength is very unsafe), that technology make peace, and help, but also bring war and die. So that people have to be much more careful when we have high-technology tools, as a miss, can cause serious problem.