Comparing Ray Bradbury's The Pedestrian And The Murderer

Throughout Ray Bradbury’s short stories, the notion is presented that humanity has become so focused on the advancement in technology that it has failed to see the dangers that might arise in the future. Through these three similarly themed narratives, he documents the potential horrible effects unfettered technology can have on society. Through his short story techniques, Bradbury challenges the reader to re-evaluate their lives. If society does not, technology will reduce our dignity, humanity and ultimately destroy us. Bradbury witnessed the horrible atrocities of WWII, the devastating inventions of the Cold War and recognised that as household technologies became more readily available, our lives became more reliant on these various gadgets

Bradbury conveys this theme through his reliance on metaphor (personification), characterization and irony. Bradbury imagines a society for the reader through his description of its streets and buildings that has been ‘sedated’ using the fancy household technology to purposefully blind people to the dark side of technology. In “The Pedestrian” consider Bradbury’s description of the traffic-ridden streets compared to a “hive” of ants. In TWCSR, Bradbury describes a wonderful house saturated in technology, self-automated and independent of humans. This house can do everything for humans: cook, clean, read, organize. Bradbury shows us this exaggerated version of the technology of his time as a glimpse into what the future could hold for the modern world. However, as the house is explored, he pulls the curtain away to reveal that “the house stood alone in a city of rubble and ash.” Unfortunately, and ironically, technology could not protect the inhabitants from nuclear destruction (or maybe even the rest of humanity). This apocalyptic version of our future, seemingly perfect in some respects, is suffering from the mistakes of the

This is communicated by Bradbury through his characterization of an unrepentant machine “murdering” Brock and freedom loving Mead. In both “The Murderer” and “The Pedestrian”, people are essentially brainwashed to conform to this ‘tech-heavy’ world, except for the characters Brock and Mead who revolt against these draconian societies. These two “deviant” rebellious individuals stand in contrast to the rest of society. The other characters in these two stories seem to have forgotten their organic, true selves and nature in favour of this artificial, inauthentic lifestyle. This is evidenced by the patrolling police car that detains the unknowing Mead, and the unaware psychologist in “The Murderer” who can see no “cure” for the imprisoned Brock. The individuals in these societies have become ghosts of themselves, with their houses being described as “tombs”. Those who express themselves freely, whether through a simple night-time stroll, as in the case of Leonard Mead, or more unconventional ways such as Mr Brock (who “.planned to murder [his] house”) are marked as ‘deviants’ and ‘of unsound