The Pedestrian

In Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” the year is A.D. 2053 (Bradbury Page 642.) A narrator describes the world through the main character’s, Mr. Leonard Mead, eyes. Bradbury describes a future in which everyone is consumed by their televisions and there are only a few who are not. Bradbury uses a fictional tale to catch the reader's attention and to

In the short story, “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, is an example of dystopian literature. First and foremost, a characteristic of dystopian literature is that citizens live in a dehumanized state. This is shown in the story when, “In the ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.” This quote supports the thesis in that people are not allowed to do the simplest task of walking without reason, or acting without reason. This is a dehumanized state of life, due to there being such a thing as cabin fever, and that it is one of the most common activities of humans. To add to this, “The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead,

Every story has a setting. Whether it is in this world or one that is completely imaginary, the setting of any story is necessary in order to understand the characters. The characters in the following three short stories are shaped by their setting and would not be the same if the setting was different. Over the course of each story it is easy to see how vital the setting is in order for the reader to fully understand the characters and their lives. Therefore, while the reader reads these stories they must analyze how the setting affects the characters, the obstacles that the setting creates, and what it tells us about the characters.

In “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, the author uses simple, but powerful similes as a gateway to the reader understanding the setting of the story. “The Pedestrian” is the tale of a lone wandering man walking down the street at twilight. The man is then accused of being a criminal and taken back to his home, also known as “The Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.” The similes used in the story help readers fully understand and see the setting of “The Pedestrian”.

The short story The Pedestrian is an intriguing story that takes place in the future. This story suggests that if the world continues the progress that it is now then we will become no more than humans who are doing nothing with our lives. It shows how people would seclude themselves from others and begin to stop caring for others. Is this actually a possibility in the future?

In conclusion, the opening and closing sentences of the short story “The South” hold a fairly large significance on the reader’s understanding and experience of the events within the stories. The opening provides a cultural background and character development that adds to a prospective reader’s understanding of the story while the closing give a sense of ambiguity to the story and causes the reader to analyze the story more

Ray Bradbury uses irony to display how the obsession of technology increases the possibility of losing connection with yourself. In The Pedestrian, he displays how an innocent man gets stopped and questioned by the police only because what he was doing appeared unusual. “‘What are you doing out?’ ‘Walking,’ said Leonard... ‘Have you done this often?’ ‘Every night for years.’ The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming...The back door of the police car sprang wide. ‘Get in.’ ‘Wait a minute, I haven't done anything!’” (Bradbury pg2) Unexpectedly, Leonard Mead gets arrested for doing the unusual- walking around his neighborhood. What would normally seem fine is uncommon in Mr. Mead’s society, because he is the only one who wanders around his neighborhood while everyone else stays in, busy watching television. Bradbury focuses on Mr. Mead’s isolation and dissimilarity to everyone else by indicating how “He would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows.” (Bradbury pg1) Bradbury depicts a society in decline; where the houses are like coffins and the people are dead from their addiction to their screens. Mr. Mead is

In the short story “The Pedestrian” Ray Bradbury tells a story of Mr. Leonard Mead who is alone and isolated in newly innovated world of A.D. 2053. In this futuristic society Mr. Mead is no longer needed as a writer, so he then walks over uneven sidewalks for ten years capturing vivid images of the society he currently lives in which is strongly impacted by technology. Throughout the text, Ray Bradbury uses literary devices such as imagery, foreshadowing, and symbolism to reveal how societies may be strongly influenced by the new advances of technology.

Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Pedestrian” is a dramatic illustration of the dangers of living in a world where contact with nature is deemed so abnormal that even walking alone at night is a crime. The dystopian story revolves around the tale of a man named Leonard Mead, living during a time period not so far away from our own, in 2053 CE. In the story, a robotic police car is so suspicious of Mead’s walking behavior during one pleasant night that he is taken away to a psychiatric hospital.

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

Damon Knight’s “The Country of the Kind” follows a narrator who the audience at first knows little about, who lives in a society that is different from the norm, but is also initially left ambiguous. This sense of the unknown exists up until the narrator stumbles upon a pamphlet which opens up new viewpoints to the reader. The pamphlet serves to create three new perspectives in particular, all of which significantly shift the reader’s understanding of the story. First, it gives the reader a chance to understand the narrator and sympathize with him. Second, it offers a new perspective on society and their overall conception of what defines a utopia. The third and final perspective is that of the people who live within this society, and their interactions with the main characters. These three new perspectives prove to be formative in understanding the main character, his interactions with other characters in the story, and the role of society.

“All kinds of creative possibilities are made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man, if man is not enslaved by it” as quoted by Jonas Salk during a speech about the technological advances in modern medicine in the 1950s. In the short stories by Ray Bradbury, he illustrates how the characters are struggling to live with the futuristic capabilities of technology. “The Pedestrian” focuses on a man named Leonard Mead who is the only person in society who does not use the technology in his home, his hobby is to walk. However, he is viewed as an outcast. “The Veldt” focuses on how George and Lydia Hadley figure out how their children’s nursery is powered by their mind and how they use it to have a tragic advantage over their parents in the end. While technology can let people connect to others much more efficiently, Ray Bradbury shows how the characters in his short stories “The Pedestrian” and “The Veldt” prove how technology is capable of isolating people from reality.

From the start the novel is laden with the pressures that the main characters are exposed to due to their social inequality, unlikeness in their heredity, dissimilarity in their most distinctive character traits, differences in their aspirations and inequality in their endowments, let alone the increasingly fierce opposition that the characters are facing from modern post-war bourgeois society.

The author writes the story in a very interesting way. The way that there are only a few descriptions scattered about and that it focuses on dialogue is what allows us to figure out what the characters are speaking about and to find the intentions behind their words. The subject of this short narrative stands out boldly. Though it was written in

Short Stories normally address issues in society at the current time of the story which these issues sometime end up being timeless issues that still occur in the current time period. For instance, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman the story deals with the issue of postpartum depression in new mothers. While postpartum depression is still a very real and current topic in today’s society. Current society handles the issue differently than when the “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written. The difference in modern day and past society is contributed to the increasing knowledge of postpartum depression that has led to a new view for society, improved treatments, and a better approach for support from family. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”