Ray Bradbury's 'The Pedestrian'

In Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Pedestrian”, a simplistic writer named Leonard Mead walks every night along the sidewalks of a city depicted as “a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows” (Bradbury 47). In a futuristic world where literature and interaction become obsolete, Mead shows retrogressive tendencies as he takes nightly walks throughout his city in which many citizens appear as sluggish and addicted to television. One night while walking and observing the soulless families hiding behind the flashing lights of television screens, a robotic police officer arrests him for walking, an activity scrutinized as abnormal in this surrealistic age. Bradbury authors his short story following the television's invention to illustrate its negative effects in human lives. In today’s world where newly invented technologies seem more desirable than literature and human interaction, humans risk developing unemotional lifestyles similar to the robotic personalities depicted in the short story. Throughout the chilling story, “The Pedestrian”, the newly invented television …show more content…
Bradbury highlights the divisiveness of technology as it keeps humans mentally and physically sedentary. Bradbury also incorporates realistic social influences into his story when he uses his style of writing to point out the dearth of literacy that plagues America. Bradbury’s literal approach “underlines realistic and troubling changes in the American lifestyle” (D'Ammassa). Many Americans find themselves looking at a screen rather than a person, which ultimately will cause the decline of basic reverence and