
In The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, many rhetorical devices were used. These rhetorical devices included structure, foreshadowing, and pathos. Bradbury used these techniques to persuade his audience to agree with his belief that the overuse of technology ultimately leads to the intrinsic demise of human behavior. 

Bradbury believes that excessive technology is very bad and that children growing up with the overdependence of technology will turn out spoiled or even become troubled. Bradbury used the structure of a narrative in his story in order to better persuade his audience of his opinion of technology. This technique is very effective because it allows the audience to know exactly what the characters are saying and feeling. Most of this story is made up of direct quotes from the characters with only a few descriptive sentences in between. The structure in The Veldt allows Bradbury to better persuade his audience because the characters’ feelings help to show Bradbury’s point that technology can be destructive and be harmful to children. This can be seen when he writes, “That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath” (6)? When the child of the story says this, it shows the audience just how dependent the children have become on technology and how they would be helpless without it. Other direct quotes like this help to persuade the audience of Bradbury’s hatred of the abuse of technology. 

Another rhetorical device that Bradbury uses in The Veldt is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing added an element of mystery to this short story. Bradbury used mystery to worry the reader and also make them interested in the story. When the parents in the story hear two screams coming from the nursery, the mother comments, “Those screams- they sound familiar” (6). Bradbury used the repeated presence of screams in his story to show how the children are slowly becoming more troubled and even evil acting. Because the children have formed a hatred for their parents due to their overdependence of technology and have been sneaky about the African veldt in the nursey, it can be inferred that the children are planning to kill their parents by the end of the story. At the end of the story, the audience finds out why the screams sounded so familiar to the parents. It was because the screams were those of the parents from when the children were practicing having the lions in the nursery attack and eat them. Further on in the story, the children were angry at their parents for turning off their technology, and the son shouted at his father, “I wish you were dead” (9). This is another example of foreshadowing and again shows how the overuse of technology is ruining the children’s kindness and innocence. Bradbury used foreshadowing to add an element of suspense and further prove his point that technology can lead to destruction and even death. With this technique, he was able to persuade the audience more of his belief. 

Bradbury also used the rhetorical device, pathos, in order to appeal to the audience’s emotions. This device played a large part in persuading the audience that technology was becoming bad for people. Pathos was seen when the parents of the story briefly turned off their technologically advanced house that they had depended on for years. Bradbury wrote, “The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical cemetery. So silent. None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting to function at the tap of a button” (9). The dead bodies description really played into the audience’s emotions and showed how depressing and worthless the house had become now that the technology was turned off. The image of death was a strong visual that was able to haunt the audience and allowed them to see just how empty the family’s lives in the story was after the technology was taken away. Through the use of pathos, Bradbury hoped that the audience would take his side and in turn limit their use of technology in their own lives. By the end of The Veldt, the audience most likely agrees with Bradbury’s point that technology is being abused and depended on too much. The use of pathos contributed to the persuasion of the audience. 

The Veldt was a short story written by Ray Bradbury who wanted to share his belief that technology led to ill-behaved children and should not be completely depended on to survive. He made his belief apparent in his short story by showing how evil the children had become because of the prolonged overuse of technology. Bradbury used structure, foreshadowing, and pathos to persuade the audience of his negative belief in technology. These techniques were very effective in this story and appealed to the author’s audience. 
