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And here were the lions now…so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry…and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.

This quote illustrates how the nursery blurs the line between authentic experiences and artificial reality. The description focuses on what George sees, smells, feels, and hears to emphasize how vivid and real it all seems to him. While George’s mind knows these are all effects created by technology, his body reacts as if it is all real. This suggests that humans are susceptible to being fooled into thinking the artificial reality they have created is genuine.

Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children’s minds and created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun — sun. Giraffes — giraffes. Death and death.

This quote further underscores the way the nursery blurs the real and the fake, and it also raises the stakes of the story. After all, if the nursery can create whatever the children think about, it may be capable of creating truly terrifying and dangerous scenes. The quote also foreshadows the climax of the story, when the nursery’s illusions make the jump to actual reality, resulting in George and Lydia’s deaths.

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