![]() But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance. “During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, and a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense puttering from the exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far directions. Nobody is out on the streets, people are not leaving their homes and the highways are empty at night even though during the day everywhere was a mass of busyness and activity. ![]() However, in this view of the future none is forthcoming and isolation and desolation are all around. He would like some company and to have interaction with other people. ‘Mead’ seems like he is the last vestige of humanity in a society of soulless people. He appears to want to live a different kind of lifestyle to the rest of the society he is living in. He walks past one house and thinks he may hear the sound of laughter, but then moves on because he hears nothing more.īradbury portrays ‘Mead’ being as an ‘alien’ in a strange land. ‘Mead’ has for the past ten years gone out for a walk every evening and never met anyone before. ![]() This has been happening for years with no difference. People are hiding behind the walls of their homes like zombies. “And on his way 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.” (The Pedestrian)īradbury writes about walking as if in a graveyard and the houses being like tombs. Bradbury uses the image of death a lot in this story including using the time setting of winter time, everything being cold and dark. People were not individuals any more, reading books and magazines had ceased as technology had taken over. He is the only person out as everyone else in this story set in 2053, is sat in their own houses like robots addicted to the television. The car then drives away with Mead inside.In ‘The Pedestrian’, ‘Leonard Mead’ Bradbury’s main character is seen going out for a walk on a November evening. Upon revealing the depth of Mead’s nonconformity, the car instructs Mead get in and tells him he is being taken to a psychiatric institution to be studied for regressive tendencies. This questioning reveals that Mead is nonconformist in many ways: he doesn’t own a television, he is unmarried and lives alone, and he is a writer in a society that doesn’t value the written word. The car interrogates Mead, trying to discover why he is out by himself. On this night, however, Mead meets a robotic police car-the only one left in the city, since crime is virtually nonexistent. He also talks to himself, addressing the people in the homes, asking under his breath what they are watching on television. The other citizens are described as if they are dead: “gray phantoms” who live in “tombs.” As he walks, Mead enjoys taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the natural world. ![]() He has done this for ten years and never encountered another person, since all the other people remain inside their homes, mesmerized by the light entertainment programs on their television screens. As he walks the empty streets, he passes the homes of other citizens, who are inside watching television. Mead enjoys walking the city streets alone every night. ![]() “The Pedestrian” is a dystopian short story that describes one night in the life of Leonard Mead, resident of an unnamed city in the year 2053. ![]()
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