For a brief moment they are snapped out of the trance and act like normal humans until they return home back to their television screens. In some ways this is true as people drag themselves from their stupor and turn off their televisions in order to go to work. “During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars”, The way Bradbury describes it made me feel that it happened as if switch was suddenly flicked and everyone came out of their houses at once to go to work and wherever else. In today’s society people are not as much glued to their television screens as they are to phones or computers however this short story is still very reflective of life in the twenty-first century, and i believe it should be read by those who may resemble the people described sitting in their houses while the rest of the world carries on.īy night the streets Leonard walks alongside are empty and seemingly abandoned but in the day they are filled to the brim with rushing cars and traffic. People then must have been concerned to see their children staring blankly at television screens and I believe this is what the author is trying to get across, his worry for the future generations through science-fiction. Although only a minor change I can see how some people may have feared that it could escalate, which it has but maybe not in the way they would have imagined. With the invention of television in the early 1930s people began to stay in the comfort of their homes more instead of going outside. I feel like a lot of people experience this in our society today although not as serious, one can often walk down a once busy street late at night and feel like the whole world is deserted.Ĭonsidering “The Pedestrian” was published in 1951 it seems kind of creepy that Bradbury somewhat predicted the future, as if these aspects seen in the world today were expected.
Yet here Leonard is walking down a suburban street in a city housing over three million people and he is completely alone. The idea of a quiet apocalypse dawned on me then as Leonard Mead walked past crumbling and grey houses filled with people watching television “In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time” In many post apocalyptic movies and books I have watched and read there is always a strong theme of desolation and emptiness throughout the story as the main character tries to survive.
The first thing I noticed about this story is how abandoned and un-loved the world is in the dark future Bradbury has created, yet Humans are still living relatively normal lives. and abandoned highways arcing off into the distance, yet everyone is fine and safe, it is like a quiet apocalypse and a stark warning of the future. I would recommend this text to teenagers and adults who often find themselves stuck on their devices, maybe if they read this story they may realize that they need to change. The streets resemble those in an apocalypse, with unkept pavements sprouting weeds and plants between their cracks. The man walks the empty streets alone, passing houses filled with people watching television that never go outside. We are not entirely sure who the man is or why he is so different to everyone else, but reading the text I realized he resembled many people living in our society today. The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction short story about a man lost in a strange futuristic society that does not welcome his ways, he is caught in the past and the whole world has changed without him.
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