Human innovation may lead to their ultimate downfall. In his short story “The Veldt”, Ray Bradbury emphasizes this point. As one critic observes of Bradbury, “[h]is best novels are cautionary tales about the dangers of unbridled scientific and technological progress” (Paradowski). Bradbury's stories usually revolve around a futuristic invention that goes wrong and begins to do more harm than good. In "The Veldt," George Hadley is a loving father who buys his children, Wendy and Peter, all the best new technology, including a nursery where the children's thoughts are projected onto the walls. This nursery which was supposed to help the children actually gives rise to hatred in them towards their parents. This hatred grows until Wendy and Peter use the nursery to murder their parents, an act which reminds the reader that not everything will have the desired effect. Through the use of foreshadowing, metaphor, and irony, Ray Bradbury's short story "The Veldt" communicates the theme that seemingly good things can have horrible consequences. have a negative impact on them. George sets up the nursery because he wants his children to have everything they could want within reason, but the nursery makes his children corrupt and wild to the point of murdering their own parents. The murder is not a sudden act, however, and the events leading up to it are spread throughout the story. When George finds “on his old wallet…where the lions were” (Bradbury 5) feasting on an unknown animal, this shows that the lions were eating a fake George created by the children. The children were...... middle of paper ......ory Series, revised edition (2004): 1-3. Literary reference center. Internet. January 31, 2014 Bradbury, Ray. “The Veldt”. September 23, 1950. File last edited March 8, 2004. PDF file. Caldwell, Tracy M. “The Negative Effects of Parent-Child Conflict.” » Literary theme: The negative effects of parent-child conflicts (2006): 1-5. Literary reference center. Internet. February 11, 2014. Paradowski, Robert J. “Ray Bradbury.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-9. Literary reference center. Internet. February 7, 2014. Stanton, Michael N. “Ray Bradbury.” Discovering the authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Power Search. Internet. February 11, 2014. “The Veldt”. Short stories for students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Flight. 20. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 269-286. Gale Power Research. Internet. January 31, 2014. Wolfe, Gary K. “Ray Bradbury.” Discovering the authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale PowerSearch. Internet. February 11. 2014.