A Lesson From The Future: A Thematic Analysis of “The Pedestrian” In the story, ¨The Pedestrian,¨ the author Ray Bradbury uses society, his character, Mr. Leonard Mead, and the setting to explain the theme, ¨Too much dehumanization and technology can really ruin society and the disappearance of humanity.¨ In a futuristic location, Mr. Mead walks around the silent city every night for many years until one night, one cop car roams, waiting to find someone where they do not belong. Bradbury uses society to display the theme through the use of technology and humanity. Since election year 2052 A.D. people have become intrigued and more dependent on technology based objects like the television, making society become less human. Technology like television also known as the “viewing screen” made the houses look like “tombs” while people inside “...sat like the dead…” as the “...grey …show more content…
In the story a cop car stops the main character from his usual walk with a light that agitates him making him come to a stop and become fixated on the light. The car in the story is represented by humanity by the ¨fierce¨ and ¨fiery¨ light that holds the society represented by the main character around it ¨fixed¨ like a ¨museum specimen.¨ The main character Mr. Leonard Mead portrays the theme in the story by using his thoughts, actions and words. One of the ways Mr. Mead uses his thoughts is to picture himself in a different place from where he is, ¨He could imagine himself upon the centre plain, a wintry, windless Arizona desert with no house in thousand miles, and only dry river beds, the street for company.¨ He uses the Arizona desert because the city around him is so quiet and there is not a person to be seen