way2go! 7. Coursebook, Schulbuch

38 LITERATURE The Veldt 1 by Ray Bradbury Literature along the way Before you start reading, discuss the following questions with a partner. Then share your ideas with the class. 1 What are typical issues between parents and their children today? 2 For what reasons might parents not take enough time to look after their children? How might they try to make up for this in other ways? Now read parts of the short story The Veldt and talk about the questions below. 1 2 “George, I wish you’d look at the nursery 2 .” “What’s wrong with it?” “I don’t know.” “Well, then.” [...] “It’s just that the nursery is different now than it was.” “All right, let’s have a look.” They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them. Their approach sensitized 3 a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft automaticity. “Well,” said George Hadley. They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feet across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as much as the rest of the house. “But nothing’s too good for our children,” George had said. The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon. The walls were blank and two-dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede 4 into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun. George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow. “Let’s get out of this sun,” he said. “This is a little too real. But I don’t see anything wrong.” “Wait a moment, you’ll see,” said his wife. […] “You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they’re on their way to the water hole. They’ve just been eating. I don’t know what.” “Some animal.” George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning light from his squinted eyes. […] 1 What is the nursery like? How does this compare to what a normal nursery would be like? 1 veldt: (süd)afrikanische Steppe 2 nursery: hier: Kinderzimmer 3 sensitize: hier: auslösen 4 recede: zurückweichen, verschwinden Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv