In the story, a mother and father struggle with their technologically advanced home taking over their role as parents, and their children becoming uncooperative as a result of their lack of discipline.
Plot
The Hadley family lives in an automated house called "the Happylife Home", filled with machines that aid them in completing everyday tasks, such as tying their shoes, bathing them, or cooking their food. The two children, Peter and Wendy,[a] enjoy time in the "nursery", a virtual reality room able to realistically reproduce any place they imagine, and grow increasingly attached to it.
The parents, George and Lydia, wonder if the automated house's functions have rendered their roles as parents superfluous. They are also perplexed that the nursery seems stuck on a wild Africanveldt in which lions eat what they believe to be animals. There they also find recreations of their personal belongings and hear strangely familiar screams. Wondering why their children are so fascinated by this scene of death, they decide to consult psychiatrist David McClean, who suggests they leave the home, move to the country, and learn to be more self-sufficient.
Peter and Wendy strongly resist and convince their parents to let them have one last visit to the nursery. When George and Lydia come to fetch them, the children lock them in the nursery with the pride of lions; they realize that the screams belonged to simulated versions of themselves. Shortly after, David comes by to look for George and Lydia. He finds the children enjoying lunch in the nursery and sees the lions and vultures eating carcasses in the distance, which are implied to be the parents.
↑Diskin, Lahna (January 1, 2010). Bloom, Harold (ed.). Ray Bradbury. Infobase Publishing. ISBN9781438131092. The correspondence between the names of James Barrie's memorable characters in Peter Pan and those of Bradbury's children cannot be coincidental. In both works of fiction, Wendy and Peter are devotees of Never-Never Land, a dimension that is beyond the constraints and conventions imposed on demanding, if not persecuting, adults, and which is outside the limitations and changes decreed by time. In "The Veldt", Wendy and Peter go beyond the point of no return. The vengeance they wreak on their parents leaves them unaffected and undisturbed. Afterward, when David McClean, a psychologist and family friend, finds them nonchalantly and cheerfully picnicking in the savage setting they have stimulated, they show no signs of remorse or guilt. They are unholy terrors for whom expediency and self-preservation are the sole dictates of behaviour. Like the baby in the next story, they are amoral and conscience-free.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
"Sci-Fi Radio Drama" (performance of The Veldt), Distillations Podcast, Science History Institute 
