How is the nursery supposed to work?

The nursery in Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” is an automated room that catches “the telepathic emanations of the children’s minds and created life to fill their every desire.” “The Veldt” tells the story of a futuristic house in which life has been automated, and the nursery is the apex of this automation: it transforms the children’s imaginings into a lifelike experience, combining smell, sight, taste, and feel to produce the children’s fantasies.

You sent out your thoughts. Whatever you thought would appear.

Although we learn that the children used to fantasize about fairytales and other such happy things, the room “now is hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat.” The room was designed to help children develop, but now it “has become a channel toward destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them.” In the end of the story, we learn that the children have found a way to make the fantasy of the room real, and they have locked their parents in the nursery with the lions as punishment for wanting to shut down the nursery. Instead of functioning as a healing tool as it is designed to, the nursery truly does become a “bake oven with murder in the heat.”