Character Analysis Of Peter In The Veldt

Within Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Veldt”, the difficult character, Peter Hadley is disrespectful, intelligent and ruthless. Peter is disrespectful because he shows no courtesy or manners towards his parents and anything they say. Peter exhibits his disrespect during his argument with his father. Peter would always, “look at his shoes. He never looked at his father anymore”(Bradbury 6). Peter even threatened his father when he didn’t get his way, he yelled, “I don’t think you’d better consider it anymore”(Bradbury 7), as if he were to do something about it. Peter doesn’t show his admiration towards his parents, gestures such as not making eye contact and threatening his own parents are signs of no regards due to Peter’s disrespect. In addition, Peter is also

Peter is intelligent because he is knowledgable which helps him deceive his parents and get what he wants. Peter displays his intelligence when he mislead his father into thinking that he had no idea, “about Africa and everything”(5), and changed the scenery to, “a green, lovely forest”(5), fooling his father. And when Peter’s father decided to shutdown the nursery he used his insight to once again outsmart his parents by pretending to cry and wale, ”Just a moment, just one moment, just another moment of nursery"(9) and as a result Peter got what he wanted. Due to Peter’s intelligence he was able to outwit his parents and in return achive his goal in obtaining what he wants. Lastly, Peter is known to be ruthless. Peter is ruthless becasue he feels no emotions or regret in killing/murdering his parents due to not getting his way. Peter’s father, “forbade him to take the rocket to New York”(6) and his father decided to turn off, “every machine his hand could get to”(9), which had an impact on him resulting in his plan to murder his parents without