In Bradbury's "The Veldt," the Happy Home and the nursery satirize modern society's tendency to equate happiness with comfort and ease. The Happy Home is a technological marvel that does everything for the Hadley family, to the extent that Mrs. Hadley, a housewife, feels useless. The nursery raises the two children, Peter and Wendy, who come to regard the view screens that they spend most of their time watching as more authoritative than their own parents. The story illustrates that over-reliance on technology is a trap. We can't let technology live our lives for us or raise our children for us without suffering the consequences. After falling under the grip of technology, the Hadley parents learn too late that their children have become dehumanized. They learn that letting a house do everything for them has torn their family apart, not made it happier.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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