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"The Veldt" is a short story written by American author Ray Bradbury. Originally appearing as "The World the Children Made" in the 23 September 1950 issue of ''The Saturday Evening Post'', it was republished under its current name in the 1951 anthology ''The Illustrated Man''. In the story, two children solve their disappointment with their parents by escaping to a simulated grassland that proves all too real. ==Plot summary== The Hadley family lives in an automated house called "The Happylife Home," filled with machines that do everything for them from cooking meals, to clothing them, to rocking them to sleep. The two children, Peter and Wendy become fascinated with the "nursery," a virtual reality room that is able to connect with the children telepathically to reproduce any place they imagine. The parents, George and Lydia, soon wonder if there is something wrong with their way of life. Lydia tells George, "That's just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot." They are also perplexed and confused that the nursery is stuck on an African setting, with lions in the distance, eating the dead carcass of some sort of animal. There they also find recreations of their personal belongings and hear strangely familiar screams. Wondering why their children are so concerned with this scene of death, they decide to call a psychologist. The psychologist, David McClean, suggests they turn off the house, move to the country, and learn to be more self-sufficient. The children, completely reliant on the nursery, beg their parents to let them have one last visit. The nursery has replaced their real parents. They live for the nursery. The parents relent, and agree to let them spend one more minute there. When they come to the nursery to fetch the children, the children lock them in from the outside. George and Lydia look on as the lions begin to advance towards them. They scream. At that point, they realize that what the lions were eating in the distance was not an animal, but their own simulated remains. When David comes by to look for George and Lydia, he finds the children instead enjoying lunch on the veldt and sees the lions eating something in the distance. The reader realizes that George and Lydia died at the hands of their own offspring, who had so often envisioned the lions eating them that it came true. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Veldt (short story)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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