Ray Bradbury Response

I was excited to see Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” and “There Will Come Soft Rains” on the schedule. I first read these stories in middle school and I remember them being some of the only school-assigned readings I genuinely enjoyed.

In “The Veldt,” Bradbury illustrates the dark realities of being dependent on technology. Something that stood out to me was that the nursery’s original purpose was to study children’s minds, but the Hadley family extended the nursery’s use far beyond that, leading to dark results. Bradbury is obviously warning us of the dangers of technology in this story, but he recognizes that the true danger lies in its misuse and overuse, which I believe to be true. Although technology has the ability to enhance our lives if used appropriately, it can also create an addiction that detracts from the human experience. Wendy and Peter were coddled by technology their whole lives; they didn’t know how to live without it. Even though I didn’t grow up with a virtual nursery and a machine to tie my shoes, I think the same rings true for me. It’s hard to imagine life without my phone and laptop; I would feel disconnected from the world without them. It’s all too easy to cross the line from using technology productively to becoming entirely reliant on it. Bradbury recognized this decades ago and he was right. We are continuously moving closer to the future society he imagined, and we need to do so cautiously.

“There Will Come Soft Rains” is the epilogue of “The Veldt.” Although the Hadley family is never explicitly mentioned, Bradbury implies that the house in the story is the same one from “The Veldt.” To me, the story was a humble reminder that humans are not as important we sometimes think we are. We are not the center of the universe. The technology in the house continued running as though people were still living there; it did not know anything of the nuclear explosion that wiped out everyone and everything around it. Bradbury also inserted the time of day throughout the story, reminding the reader that the end of humanity does not cease time. The poem illustrated how the birds, trees, and entire natural world wouldn’t mind if humans were gone. The world continues without us.