Delandre Boyd
ENG 2001/O525
12/13/20
Prof. Scanlan
Word Count: 1144
What I Want vs. Who I Want To Be
Technological advancements have improved the lives of man since its conception and has continued to do so to this day. But what often goes unnoticed is that even with technology usage, it comes with its own set of ethics, mainly when it comes to the person using them. Whether those ethics are based on rules(deontology), personal values(virtue), the maximization of one’s own happiness(utilitarian), identity/association(feminist), etc, there are ethics we subjectively possess/follow when it comes to the choices on the utilization of our technologies. This is even prevalent in works of fiction. With modernist fiction focusing on the plights of the elite as well as focalizing self-reflexivity and the usage of technology, Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” is a perfect example of how characters within the story make decisions based on the ethics they choose to follow in those particular moments. In order to completely understand the decisions made in the story, we must first analyze the 2 prevalent ethics shown in the story: virtue and utilitarianism ethics.
In summary, Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” is about a family consisting of George and Lydia Hadley, and their children Peter and Wendy living in an automated house known as the HappyLife Home, that caters to their whim, completing chores and tasks automatically and effortlessly. However, Peter and Wendy become excessively infatuated with the nursery, a sort of virtual reality room which can transform the room into anything they imagine and they particularly spend their time on African veldt. The parents become concerned about the children’s obsessive time-spending in the nursery and suggest that the automated house be shut off to restore the family’s self-dependence. This infuriates the children as they demand and even threaten the power be restored to the house. The parents acquiesce to the children’s demands and restore the power for one more day. The parents are lured into the nursery only to encounter actual lions and end up being eaten alive.
One pivotal decision made in the story was the family’s initial installation of the HappyLife Home. In the story it states that the very costly HappyLife Home “clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them” (Bradbury 2). This decision demonstrated an apparent use of utilitarian ethics as the very installation of the automated aimed to maximize the overall happiness of the family as it completed most, if not all, manual tasks for them that they deemed to be tedious. While this act does seem self-serving, this decision was made to improve the family’s overall welfare and maximize the family’s happiness as they were willing to spare no expense. This is proven when the story stated that the nursery “had cost half again as much as the rest of the house” (Bradbury 2). But with the children’s happiness in mind, George proudly states, “But nothing’s too good for our children” (Bradbury 2). This quote shows that George is putting the children’s overall happiness over any monetary amount. This quote also demonstrates virtue ethics as it shows George and Lydia being the type of parents that would do anything for their children.
Another pivotal decision made in the story is George and Lydia’s choice to shut down the HappyLife Home in favor of a more independent, self-sufficient lifestyle. This choice stems George and Lydia’s concern for the family’s ability to take care of themselves when George states, “ Now we’re going to really start living. Instead of being handled and massaged, we’re going to live” (Bradbury 12). This choice made by George to fully embrace a more human and self-dependent way of life rather than being catered to by a machine is a demonstration of virtue ethics. This particular decision marks a paradigm shift in the family’s approach to their way of life, as George utilizes utilitarian ethics based on virtue ethics as this use of virtue ethics stems from a moment of self-reflexivity when they themselves question why they even bought the house in the first place when Peter asks, “Lord, how did we ever get in this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?” (Bradbury 12)., with Lydia answering with “Pride, money, foolishness” (Bradbury 12). This demonstrates utilitarian ethics stemming from a shift more toward virtue ethics because they begin to reexamine the type of people they want to become, demonstrating a willingness to change and they feel that reexamination could end up maximizing their happiness in the long-term: becoming the type of people that don’t rely on technology, resulting in them maximizing their happiness in the end.
The final pivotal decision made in the story is Peter and Wendy’s decision to kill their parents. This decision stems from Peter’s rejection of George’s proposition of a self-dependent lifestyle, due to him feeling that his overall happiness comes from the automated house, or more specifically the nursery. This rejection even results in Peter indirectly threatening his father when he says, “I don’t think you’d better consider it any more, Father” (Bradbury 9) and even more so when he says, “I wish you were dead!” (Bradbury 12). With that automated house being the source of Peter and Wendy’s happiness, and with the threat of it being taken away, the children luring their parents into the nursery for them to be murdered by lions is an example of utilitarian ethics. This particular act maximizes their happiness due to the fact that it stops the parents from going through with the act of shutting off the house, showing more consideration for technology (that they consider to be more of a parent), than their actual parents.
In conclusion, technology plays quite an interchangeable role in our ethical decision-making. Our ethics can decide how we use technology as demonstrated in the first pivotal decision (George and Lydia using utilitarian ethics to purchase an automated house to cater to their every need), and technology can affect how ethical decision-making as in the final two pivotal decision (George and Lydia transitioning into using virtue ethics after feeling/being overly dependent on the automated house & Peter and Wendy’s obsessive reliance on the automated house leading them to kill their parents, thus maximizing their happiness based on utilitarian ethics). With the decision-making in Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” revolving around the maximization of happiness as well as the type of people they want to become, this particular elitist family within this modernist fiction follows virtue and utilitarian ethical decision-making that causes/is caused by the events in story.
Works Cited
Bradbury, R. (1950). The Veldt.
Scanlan, S. (2020) Five types of Ethics https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/profscanlan-english2001-fiction-f2020/files/2020/11/Five-types-of-Ethics-fall-2020.docx
Leave a Reply