The Pedestrian

Ray Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" is a simple short story with a deeper meaning. It is the short tale of Mr. Leonard Mead whom, in the year 2053 A.D., walks miles and miles each day or preferrably night throughout the city. Though roughly three million people inhabit this large city, absolutely nobody walks, thus he walks alone and has been for the past ten years. The narrator explains that the streets in the day are filled with "a thunderous surge of cars" and all kinds of bustling and comotion, but never just people simply walking (even if they are reaching a destination by means of walking, nobody does it). Inevitably, the man is finally stopped by somebody. Only that somebody is really not a being at all, its a police car programmed to respond to "crime" or just questionable people as a human officer would. After being questioned by the "officer", it is finally decided that poor Mr. Mead should be locked up and taken to a hospital for numerous reasons. One being that he doesn't have a wife, like everybody else, to take up for him. Another reason being that he claims he doesnt watch television or use his air conditioner when he feels he needs a breath of fresh air. And lastly, of course, he is simply walking for the hell of it which is something in this society that the average person simply doesn't do.

Mr. Leonard Mead seems to be a fairly simple person, and it seems to be evident that if he lived in this present time period he would be completely average. He is not an indoor person obviously, and multiple times throughout the story the narrator focuses in on Mr. Mead taking in all the beauty of nature (or whatever is left of it). Simple things like leaves crunching underneath him, or even picking up a leaf or two just to examine it. No doubt Mr. Mead is quite the average human being, which is what makes this story all the more interesting as to why he ends up being taken to a psychiatric hospital.

Ray Bradbury has a pretty interesting style of writing in my opinion. I've noticed that there is typically alot of foreshadowing in Bradbury's pieces, which can sometimes get confusing. For instance, one might begin to read this piece and automatically assume that Mr. Mead is all alone (perhaps like in his other work "There Will Come Soft Rains"). That is until you notice the hints that he drops every so often. The first one that I noticed was when he said "he was alone in this world of 2053 A.D., or as good as alone..". This doesn't impact the reader quite as much because we hadn't yet truly gotten the sense that Mr. Mead was definitely alone, but it follows soon after, which immediately raises many questions for the reader.

I think that Bradbury is obviously voicing his personal opinion about what society might come to in later days as a result of being so engulfed in technology and not so much on other people, or nature, or even yourself. Examples of this could be the fact that one of the reasons Mr. Mead was arrested was because he didnt have a wife, or that he doesnt crank up the AC to get a breath or fresh air, instead he walks. This is where the cop car serves Bradbury's purpose of really portraying where society stood at in that point in time. The cop finds it ridiculous that Bradbury doesnt watch television, and walks at night. All of this things contribute to Bradburys bigger picture, which appears to be quite similar in most of his other pieces.

This piece is, like I said before, simple but the bigger scheme of things isnt so simple at all. It gets somewhat difficult to grasp what is really going on in the story as opposed to Bradbury falsly leading you in some parts. Bradbury doesnt do this for the sole purpose of it, he commands the readers full attention by doing this because it does take some thinking to understand the Bradburys message. I would definitely reccommend this story to anybody interested in any of Bradbury's other pieces, because to me it was similar to his overall futuristic messages in both "Farenheit 451" and "There Will Come Soft Rains". Very interesting story.

Technology & Humanity 11/5/08

Though it is a question less visited by the average person, it is vital sometimes in order to maintain sanity in this day and age to wonder exactly what it is that makes us human. What seperates us from even the smartest of technology that scientists and genuises all over the world have presented us? In my opinion, human is everything that makes us the incredibly complex beings that we are. Human is an overwhelming variety of emotions that can most often affect us in the multiples just in a matter of seconds. Human is extreme intelligence (and even in circumstances where this may be lacking in an individual) human is also the ability to have an opinion and reactions based on your very own brains decision, not programming. Though in truth we are all somewhat programmed from the second we are born, as well as programmed by surrounding influences.... honestly is anybody truly original? Nevertheless, the human brain is so advanced that, though we may have satellites soaring through our universe and medical advances beyond our wildest dreams, we still have not been able to fully or even nearly replicate the human brain and its advanced patterns and abilities.

Now that I've established exactly what human is in my opinion, my real question at hand is whether or not technology humanizes or dehumanizes us. Though there could be many different aspects at which to view this question, I believe from first-hand experience that it is absoutely silly to believe that technology humanizes us. Yes, I am sure that there are some forms of technology that could in fact humanize one, for instance a virtual reality game that could lets say place a spider right in the hands of an intense arachniphobic; thus creating a very real and intense fear. This is utterly humanizing. Though realistically the practical everyday technology that is invading the common home on a daily basis is incredibly dehumanizing.

Televisions of course are one of the more controversial examples. It has been proven in tests and studies around the world that too much television is not only harmful to ones sense of reality, but it drains vital and sometimes underestimated human qualities such as creativity, imagination and just plain brain excercise! Many children spend multiple hours a day with eyes glued to the t.v. in a trance almost. It has also been proven that children who play outside, read, do homework or even just socialize excel academically and socially well above our t.v. lovers. Thus I believe that the television set that we Americans love more that anybody is probably one of the most dehumanizing technological devices that is easily accessible to almost anybody.