Short Story Comprehension Questions
The Veldt
- Advancements in technology have affected the children because they don’t need their parents anymore and they have become spoiled and horrible. The technology in the house has become so advanced that it takes care of the children in their nursery. The parents don’t have any parental jobs anymore. Lydia doesn’t have to rock her children to sleep, cook or clean and as a result the children no longer respect or listen to their parents anymore.
2. I think the story was originally called “The World the Children Made” because the story centres around this disturbing “world” the children had created in their nursery. This world they have created is dangerous and deadly and adults are not allowed in! Their disturbing imaginations have created a scene from the savannah where deadly man eating lions in the end eat their parents.
3. I believe that the children put their father’s wallet and their mother’s scarf into the veldt with the lions so that the lions could get their scent. The fact that they are both bloodied foreshadows that something terrible is going to happen to Lydia and George in the nursery.
4. Bradbury creates and maintains suspense in the story from the very beginning of where Lydia says there is something wrong with the nursery. She says she feels like the house has taken over the role of mother. Bradbury maintains suspense by using foreshadowing in the story. He foreshadows that something bad is going to happen by showing the lions feasting on something in the distance. There are even vultures in the scene. When I think of vultures, I think of death.
5. The irony in this story is that the house was supposed to make everyone’s life better and easier. Where in fact the house is driving everyone crazy. The nursery was supposed to help raise well adjusted kids, but it’s actually allowed them to become disturbed killers with no respect or love for their parents. It’s actually ironic that the house is called “HappyLife” home.
6. The Veldt is told from the third person point of view, limited omniscient. The narrator is telling the story as though watching it happen. Although, the author lets us into George’s thoughts and feelings a little. This affects our understanding of the story and characters because we don’t know what they children are feeling and thinking. We don’t know why they have become so disturbed. We only know how George perceives things.
7. An allusion is an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly. An illusion is a deceptive appearance or impression; an erroneous mental representation. Allusion is used in the story with the children’s names. Peter and Wendy are also the main characters in Peter Pan, which also centers around and imaginary world thought up by children. There is a big difference between the childlike world of Peter Pan and the imaginary world of the Veldt.
Vocabulary:
- Veldt: Uncultivated country or grassland in southern Africa. Pg. 1
2. Automaticity: Working by itself with little or no direct human control. Pg. 1
3. Efficiency: Technical the ratio of the useful work performed by a machine or in a process to the total energy expended or heat taken in. Pg. 2
4. Contraptions: A machine or device that appears strange or unnecessarily complicated, and often badly made or unsafe. Pg. 4
5. Intersperse: Scatter among or between other things; place here and there. Pg. 6