Problems In Contemporary Society In The Pedestrian And A Sound Of Thunder By Ray Bradbury

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Problems in Contemporary Society

When the world is slowly changing the only way to inform people about what is to come is through dystopian literature. “Dys-topia comes from the Ancient Greek meaning “bad” and “place to live” (Stewart, 2013). In order for a text to be considered dystopian literature it need to consist of four elements: background, hero, conflict, and climax (Stewart). Two short stories by Ray Bradbury, The Pedestrian and A Sound of Thunder, show how dystopian literature alerts the reader to problems with conformity in their society.

In The Pedestrian, Bradbury portrays how being different and not conforming is not acceptable in society. In order to get his idea across, Bradbury begins by setting the
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The government taking control is portrayed at the beginning of the story when a good amount of rules are set into place. The main character Eckels travels back in time with other time travelers. Their goal is to travel back to the land before time when Dinosaurs existed. They are to kill the wild beast in order to return home. Eckels has no idea what he was getting himself into when he agreed to travel back. Throughout his journey Eckels tests the government rules by confronting the head time travels with questions such as, “what if I only kill a bug that can’t hurt anything in the future.” The time travelers continue to fill with rage as Eckels never ending questions roll off his tongue. Just by asking questions, Eckels is disobeying the government. He is not conforming to the rest of the time travelers. Finally, the traveler tell Eckels to just follow the rules if he doesn’t want the future to get hurt. In the end, Eckels breaks the most important rule of them all, he steps off the track and kills a butterfly. Later to find out that he changed the future with one little kill. This was the consequence for not conforming to the rest of society. Criticism discussed by Jason Sheehan discusses how again this would never happen in real life. The events in the story are too futuristic, like the kind of technology you would only see in a movie. Sheehan discussed how in dystopian literature only two ideas; evil and sadness that has passed through society and how people are still standing by expecting more to

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