Family Matters: Literary Analysis of the Veldt and Heart of a Dog Essay

Family Matters Literary Analysis of The veld and substance of a chase after A family whole is like a fragile, expensive artifact. It shag be absolutely beautiful, but it crumb also absolutely shatter into a million pieces if the wrong entity gets ahold of it. Sometimes, this critical entity that shatters it may be applied science that has been apply in the wrong ways. In both The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury, and Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov, the power of technology threatens to bring dash off the family social unit as the reader comm precisely knows it.The technology in for each one hold first grows the idea of family, but ultimately ends up hurting the fond dynamic of the family it had hoped to expand. These books explore the problems that technology causes that were originally trying to fix them. In this way, technology helped to support these families initially, but eventually knocked them d consume, shattering them hopelessly into the ground. In Ray Bradburys The Ve ldt, the Hadley family lacked technology to make their lives easier, to a greater extent flush unornamented, and as a life enhancer. They made their house do everything possible to motorize ordinary household chores.The Happylife Homeclothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and contend and sang and was good to them (12) this indicated the attempt to create an environment that would be free of worries. The nursery, the phantasmagorical play place George Hadley had installed because nothing is too good for our children (14) was so amazing that George was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room (15) In this sense, George was doing what he could for his family, trying to bring them closer by providing the means to a happier existence for his kids, as well as his wife.With every chore interpreted cathexis of, what worries could one possibly leave? As the family would eventually arise out, there were quite a few problems. Very quickly did this dreamlike world filled with easiness and carefree living come crashing down on the Hadleys. With her regular duties such as cooking and cleaning taken up by the omnipresent house, Lydia Hadley was deprived of her usual sanity she finds in her chores. She vents about her replacement as a caretaker in the family when she states, I finger like I siret belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. rump 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. (16) While the house was designed to make Lydias domicile life much less stressful, she laments the fact that her place in the family has been overtaken by an inanimate object, and that she has lost all hope of connecting with her family. She is also not the except person whose role has changed via the houses do everything programming. Lydia comments on her married mans nature by saying You look as if you didnt know what to do with yourself in this house, either.You smoke a little moredrink a little moreneed a tranquillising every night. Youre beginning to feel unnecessary too. (17) These mechanical tools that were mean to increase family bonding time by taking away chores contract kind of induced a sense of laziness. This was a critical pure tone for the Hadleys, replacing everyday work not with enriching playtime, but with sheer boredom, masking how this technology has worsened their conditions. The technology essentially replaced George and Lydia as parents and caretakers, setting the gift for a social upheaval in the family.When the nursery was left to its own devices, the kids, Peter and Wendy, grew in power, give earmingly overthrowing George and Lydia, ceasing to listen to them anymore. A chilling character of this is when George threatens to turn off the house and Peter coldly states, I dont think youd better consider it any more, Father. To which George replies I wont have any threat s from my son (23) This shows how the power offset has shifted from the adults to the kids. Peter turns into a cold, mean-spirited son when George keeps threatening to turn off the house, boldly proclaiming Oh, how I hate youI wish you were dead (26) This is simply signal a few pages later when the kids lock George and Lydia into the nursery with the lions, to be savagely murdered. Over the course of just a short time, the reader witnesses how the technology of the house had overturned a seemingly happy family into a socially backward, messed up family. In Mikhail Bulgakovs Heart of a Dog, Philip Philippovich uses his surgical practices in order to create a family unit, which ultimately runs astray. Philippovich uses his technology on the domestic dog Sharikov in order to transform he dog to a tender and assert his dominance over this human that he creates. It is an incredible undertaking in technology that starts with a positive thought about creation, and ends in pure mis ery and despair.While Preobrazhensky may not have the stereotypical family situation, it can be argued that by asserting his status as master of Sharikov, Preobrazhensky was claiming his status as a father figure for Sharikov. oneness such time where Sharikov calls Philipovich his dad is during a meal in which Philipovich is universe very impatient with Sharikov, and Sharikov retorts, saying Youre getting too rocky on my, dad. (70) While Philipovich gets very defensive about this statement, and doesnt want to be called a dad, the fact that Sharikov even considers this a possibility is a huge telltale sign into their social structure of the home. It is also essentially the beginning of the end for their life as a family unit. While the technology of the surgery may have led to a creation of a family dynamic between Sharikov and Preobrazhensky, however, eventually this analogous dynamic eventually crashes, and the same technology used to create a human being to a dog, transforms t hat same human back into a dog.This represents the dismantling of a family unit by the hands of the same technology that set it up in the first place. Philippovich has an epiphany near the end of the novel, realizing he does not need to be a creator, a father figure, when nature itself will take care of the creating. Preobrazhensky grumbles, The surgery might be possible to turn a dog into a highly advanced human. But what the hell for? Doctor, the human race takes care of this by itself, and every year, in the course of its evolution, it creates dozens of outstanding geniuses who invest the earth, stubbornly selecting them out of the mass of scum (103).This is when he decides that the technology he has been using to create his family dynamic is essentially useless, and that the technology of the surgery only caused him more harm than good. In comparing these two books readers can see how the use of different forms of technology worked on each family unit in similar ways, leading to a destruction of family. In The Veldt, the Hadley family comes as an already established, traditional family structure, however, upon the introduction to technology seemingly falls apart at the seams. This is contrasted to theHeart of a Dog, where the definition of family is slightly different. In this book, the reader can see how technology singlehandedly create and then pull apart a family structure, effectively showing the immense power that this technology has. In each book, however, we can see the huge difference that this technology makes on the family. The Veldt has a murderous ending which can be solely attributed to the refreshed technological advances of the nursery. The Heart of a Dog displays a harsh unless familial father-son relationship that breaks down with the misuse of the powerful technology that created it. through with(predicate) these two novels the reader discovers how technology, when misused, can cause the serious destruction of family. both Bradbury an d Bulgakov challenge the notion that technology is always progressive in nature, and instead offer an alternative, showing how technology can instead break and change integrity an important social institution. Both stories can be looked at as at one point incredible artifacts which, via the mistaken power of technology, collapsed onto themselves and tattered into mess.