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  • Essay / Ray Bradbury Hates Technology: Analysis of "The Pedestrian"

    In 2016, technology is part of our daily lives, but in the future, technology will become much more advanced and powerful, and not always in beneficial ways . In Ray Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian", the year is 2053 A.D. and technology is taking over the world. The main character, Mr. Leonard Mead, has a daily routine that involves walking for hours and miles in a quiet town until he returns home at midnight. Throughout the narrative, Bradbury shows through symbolism, setting, and dialogue that technology can take away nature and beauty from life itself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The only thing Mr. Leonard Mead would want to do is walk for hours on the streets of a “deserted” city. The powerful symbolism helps the reader understand how strongly the author feels about the subject. Mr. Mead's first glimpse of human life is that "everything now happened at night in the tomb-like houses." The tombs, dimly lit by the light of the television, where people sat like the dead, the gray or multi-colored lights brushing against their faces, but never touching them" (58). The reader learns the point of view of the author when the houses are described as resembling tombs, where people sit motionless like the dead. It is also implied that the inhabitants of the houses rarely have contact with other people, other than those transported by the house. light of the television, which never touches them physically. how Mr. Mead “put his hand on the door and looked into the back seat, which was a small cell, a small black prison with bars. riveted steel. It smelled like harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft about it” (59). and the dark and sad life of a prisoner. The use of words like “hard,” “antiseptic,” and “metallic,” which do not appeal to smell or touch, also indicates a disillusioned attitude toward technology. Bradbury's detailed description of the setting helps the reader visualize the darkness and gloom. world bombarded with technology. Through the eyes of Mr. Leonard Mead we see that "on his way he saw the cottages with their dark windows, and it was no different from passing through a churchyard where only the faintest glow of a firefly appeared in twinkles behind the windows. Sudden gray ghosts seemed to manifest on the interior walls of a room where a curtain was not yet drawn against the night, or there were whispers and murmurs where a window of a tomb-like building was still open (56). the strange and dark setting of the "abandoned" city, although it is inhabited. It also indicates the bustling life inside the eerie houses, unlike the empty streets with only whispering, creepy shadows to show signs of life. Mr. Mead continues his walk, he indicates that “The cement disappeared under the flowers and the grass. In ten years of walking night or day, thousands of kilometers, he had never met anyone walking, not a single one in all that time. » (57). Cement that is not maintained implies a lack of people walking and actually using the grass and earth. Today, newspapers and.