Setting

Time setting

Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” was published in 1951. The advanced technology presented in the story – a fully automated house, a nursery that can sense the children’s feelings and thoughts and reproduce a life-like landscape through virtual reality, traveling by rocket – suggests that the action takes place in a fictional society in the future. 

The action probably unfolds over several days, but mentions events that happened a month earlier, explaining why the children have become disobedient: “ ‘They’ve been acting funny ever since you forbade them to take the rocket to New York a few months ago.’ ”

Physical setting

The story mentions real places in the US such as New York and Iowa, but the action takes place solely in the Hadley’s Happylife Home which “clothed, fed, and rocked them to sleep”. The house is designed to tend to its inhabitants’ every need, going as far as tying their shoelaces for them and moving them around. Also, George and Lydia’s beds rock them to sleep as if they were children. This adds to the idea that, by having their every need tended to, the adults’ role in the house and in their children’s lives is minimal. In a sense, George and Lydia become children themselves, which affects their mental state and their relationship with Pete...