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Dialogue And Symbolism In The Pedestrian, By Ray Bradbury

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“...he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone…” The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury is a short story that focuses on the idea of how lonely it can be in a world of technology. Starting the story with Leonard Mead, the pedestrian, walking around the neighborhood and talking to the houses as if they were people not talking to the ghosts within the windows. During mid walk he ran into some trouble with the police leading him into being arrested for walking without a valid purpose. The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury portrays this idea of how lonely it can be in a world of technology by using metaphors, dialogue and symbolism. The author begins the story by using metaphors to describe the people in the story. When explaining people the …show more content…

When he is talking to the police, they begin to ask questions about why he was walking and were confused when he said things like, “Walking for air. Walking to see” This made them ask if his machines that were supposed to give the pleasure of walking without actually having to walk were broken. When he gave a response of, “no” they were further puzzled. This sound of metallic voices leads to the readers knowing that they are robots, and like the humans they have no clue why Mr. Mead is out and about walking when he could be living a “better” life indoors. During Mr. Mead’s walk he begins to speak to the houses, “He asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. ‘Eight-thirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?’” He talks to the houses as if they were people. This could be interpreted as two things. One being that he is talking to the houses as people since that is where they live and that he is just talking to the person in which is a robot giving the human organism's life. So he is just talking to the actual personality of the homes. There is a saying that, “you can tell a lot about a person just by their house” since the outsides of houses are different it is the diversity in which the occupants of the house lack. So he is talking to the only things that are diverse like he …show more content…

He uses the brightness of light to show the personalities of the households. The text explains the houses as, “... the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard and where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows.” This is demonstrating how little of individuality there is in the people of this city. The author says how it is like walking through a graveyard but there is a little bit of light, perhaps the light is to symbolizing how alive the people are; how joyous it is to live their lives. Compared to a graveyard technically the people are still “living” in this story to where a graveyard people are literally dead. Once they begin to talk about Leonard Mead’s house it explains the amounts of light, “They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of the electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.” The author explains his house as bright but the rest on the city dark concluding this overwhelming idea of how different he is, how lively he is, giving an answer about why he was walking and why in the beginning in the story it was saying how he was the only one walking and that he would choose a route to take and endure this path

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