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Ray Bradbury's 'The Pedestrian'

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The Pedestrian Thesis: In a short story titled “The Pedestrian”, written by Ray Bradbury, Bradbury uses the setting to display a lonely, sad mood and person vs society conflict as he battles the lonely streets. Bradbury shows the lonely mood by having the character walk alone in the empty streets. Bradbury wasted no time describing the streets as silent and misty making for a very lonely mood. Mead, the main character, walks along the streets alone with no sign of life, saying “he would see cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where the faintest light is a flicker of a firefly” Bradbury’s quote shows how empty and lonely the streets are by referring to them as a …show more content…

Mead walks along the empty streets as the city seems to be silent due to restrictions but only one can guess. Society has also cut many programs like cutting the police program, “the police of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million there was only one car left.” the strong dystopian connection really shows by a oppressive society places many hard restriction and many job cuts as shown by the police force being cut to one car, but this is not the only thing that has been taken by society in this story. Society has also taken away individuality as everyone lives the same social life. Everyone is inside by Eight o’clock, everyone watches tv at the same time, and everyone gets their fresh air from a machine on their front door. Well Mead still had some unique bone left in his body and society thinks he’s a crazy person for it. Mead went for a walk and was picked up by police during this part of the story, “ ‘where are you taking me?” The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping car by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. “To the psychiatric center for research on regressive tendencies’” People view Mead as crazy for still having some sense of individuality left, which clearly shows the person vs society

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