Essay Sample: The Efficiency of an Automated Home in the Example of The Veldt Story

The efficiency of an automated house in helping parents raise families is the main theme. In particular, the case of "The Veldt" story is used. The story presents a family made of the father (George), mother (Lydia) and the children (Peter and Wendy). This family has an automated house and a nursery that fascinates the children. The nursery later became a bother to the family because the children are too engrossed in it to even do their homework. They also develop a weird obsession with watching lions maul over the bodies of humans. Therefore, the main question that rises is, 'how efficient is the automated home in helping raise families?'

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The automatic home offers everything that the family needs. The automated home had cost the family a total of thirty thousand dollars and Peter and Wendy were obsessed with it. The nursery which was also installed was taking up much of the children's time. That is seen when George said that he will switch it off until the children did their homework. Not only was the nursery wasting the kid's time, it was also breaking up the family unit. George was concerned that his family will not develop normally. In as much as he admitted that the home was doing everything including bathing the kids, he was concerned that the home was also separating the members of the family. That can be shown by the fact that the children were so unresponsive to what their parents told them and also revealed their hate for their parents for tampering with the nursery (Gale, 2015). Lydia also says that their home is now full of hatred because of the automatic nursery. When the psychologist David McClean was called in, they discovered that the kids were fascinated with gory images like watching lion reaping off and eating human flesh. When the kids are given the last chance to use the nursery, they locked their parents in to watch them being eaten by the lions. Therefore, the psychologist told the parents to close the nursery (Gale, 2015).

If the automated home is properly managed such that it does not affect the family synergy, it will be beneficial to have an automated home. As we see with the Hadleys home, the automated home did everything and the parents did not have to do much. Therefore, automated home helps parents save time. The time that could be used in the daily chores that could be handled by the home could be invested in other productive activities. Thus, parents could have easy moment managing the family. An automated home could also be helpful in keeping the children busy and engaged. Wendy and Peter were busily engaged in playing and watching the virtual world of Africa. More often than not, parents face the hurdle of trying to control their children and what they do. With an automated home, the children are kept busy and their minds engaged.

For the Hardleys, the automated home did not work because there was no balance and regulation of the nursery's content. When the machine was installed, it seems that the parents were quite detached with the kids' lives. That is seen with the kind of obsession that the children have developed on the nursery. It was until George noticed that the children were going too far with the machine that he decided to switch it off. If they had balanced the machine such that there were specific times to use it, it would have been much better for the parents and the kids(Gale, 2015). That is because the children would have understood that the machine was only meant for recreational purposes after there have done what their parents told them to do. It would have been even better if the family handled the machine together instead of leaving their Peter and Wendy to their own devices.

References

Gale, C. L. (2015). A Study Guide for Ray Bradbury's The Veldt. Gale, Cengage Learning.