Word Choice In The Pedestrian By Ray Bradbury

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In the short story, “The Pedestrian,” written by Ray Bradbury, an interesting man had decided to go for a walk. The main character, Leonard Mead, seemed to be foreign to the rest of the city, as he was the only one outside in the late hours of the day. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, until Mead began to describe his current situation. The protagonist was placed in a future setting, living in the year 2053. He had described life to be very advanced although people in the city spent a majority of their time inside their homes. The word choice in this eerie tale, allows the reader to fully grasp the overall tone of this passage. Using a specific repertoire of descriptive words, proved to be a genuine writing technique in this piece of text. The word …show more content…

For example, towards the beginning of the story, word choice was displayed, as the passage reads, “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 that appeared in flickers behind the windows” (Bradbury, 2). This piece of text adequately explains to the reader, just how out of place Mead was for simply walking outside at night. Applying an additional use of word choice, the author emphasizes that Mead was in the minority while sculpting the tone, with the phrase, “The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them” (Bradbury, 10). The routine of the city allows the reader to infer that Mead