example of metaphor in bradburys the pedestrian

Instead, the city of automobiles resembles a swarm of insects scurrying around. Bradbury describes the city in the daytime as “a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far direction.” The people driving are not mentioned. He takes this notion a step further by critiquing the automobile’s effects on humans, likening people in cars to mindless, swarming insects rather than complex, sentient beings. In comparing the masses to the dead, Bradbury portrays people as having lost their uniquely human life force and spirit. Mead, then, is established as the last living soul in a world of empty, lifeless “phantoms” who are wholly consumed by technology. The people inside watching their televisions are motionless and emotionless, metaphorically dead: “the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.” The people of 2053 are clearly more concerned with what is happening in the fictional, sensationalized realm of television than they are with their own physical surroundings-though they are superficially “touched” by what they watch, it has no meaningful, tangible impact upon them. Passing one “tomb-like building,” Mead sees “gray phantoms” through open windows, and he hears “whisperings and murmurs” from the people within.

The homes Mead passes are described as housing the dead: “tombs, ill-lit by television light.” The houses, too, are devoid of any signs of liveliness, and people’s pacification in front of their televisions inside these deathly structures indicates that modern technology is the cause.

Walking through the “silent and long and empty” streets is like “walking through a graveyard.” This establishes the landscape as one that has been robbed of all vitality by the television, which everyone is inside watching. Through this use of morbid language, Bradbury predicts that one of the most exciting technological advances of his time, the television, will eventually deaden its viewers. Through imagery of death, descriptions of humans in cars as insects, and Mead’s interaction with the robotic police car, “The Pedestrian” expresses the pessimistic view that the technological advances of the 1950s (like televisions, automobiles, and computers) will ultimately rob people of their essential humanity and give undue power to machines.Īs Leonard Mead walks through the city, the streets, homes, and people are all described with imagery of death. Bradbury’s short stories and novels frequently explore the social costs of technological progress. He is ultimately arrested merely for walking freely on the street, an absurd event that reveals Bradbury’s grim view of 21st century: it’s a dystopian world where technology has deadened the populace and enabled state power to enforce conformity. For 10 years, Mead has walked the city streets alone, night after night, past homes of other citizens who sit transfixed by their televisions.

Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Pedestrian” narrates the life of Leonard Mead, a resident of an unnamed city in the year 2053.

Example of metaphor in bradburys the pedestrian