So you’ve been assigned Ray Bradbury’s The Pedestrian as one of the texts you need to conduct an analysis for in Module C: The Craft of Writing. Fear not!
This will be a comprehensive guide to the text — whether you need help wrapping your head around the meaning of the short story or are looking for additional resources for your writing, we have you covered.
Let’s get right into it!
The Pedestrian Summary
Key Characters in The Pedestrian
Context
Themes Explored in The Pedestrian
Analysis of The Pedestrian
Studying this Text for the HSC
Summary of The Pedestrian
Written in 1951, The Pedestrian is set more than 100 years later in the year of A.D 2053.
It is a dystopian setting as we follow Mr Leonard Mead as he takes his solitary walk through the deserted city. While Leonard takes his walks every evening, he has never encountered another walker.
Instead, most citizens are in their homes, fixated to their televisions — Mead is an anomaly in his city, with different values and continues to appreciate the small traces of nature he can find in his surroundings.
On this night, Leonard is confronted by an automated police car that questions his reasons for going on an evening stroll. Through this interaction, we realise the lack of agency and self-determination citizens in this dystopian have.
Despite engaging in the harmless activity of taking an evening walk, Leonard is immediately placed under suspicion due to his departure from the social norms of his society.
As his interrogation continues, the police car discovers that he does not have a wife, does not own a television and instead is a writer. Leonard’s departure from social norms has him arrested and brought to the “Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies”.
Key Characters in The Pedestrian
For Bradbury’s short story there are only two key characters who are portrayed in opposition to each other: Mr Leonard Mead and the Police Car.
Leonard is portrayed as a simple man with simple pleasures. The opening of the short story depicts him stepping out into a “misty evening in November” doing an activity he “most dearly loved to do”.
He greets each house as he walks past, and observes the overgrown paths as the “cement was vanishing under flowers and grass”. While we may be tempted to think of Leonard’s physical world as cold, grey and sterile, Bradbury makes sure to remind us that nature is overtaking the city’s infrastructure and reclaiming its spot within the land.
In contrast, the police car serves as a representation of the people in the dystopian world Leonard is in. With a “metallic voice” and incessant interrogation, the police car represents the automation, industrialisation, and surveillance that Americans were subject to during the Cold War.
Furthermore, the reveal at the end that the police car is empty leaves the reader with the question of whether there is a human behind the voice.
If so, they are as empty and uncaring as the automated police car. If not, it alludes to the industrialisation and lack of humanity in society.
Context
Written during the Cold War era, Bradbury explores several key themes within this short story. Despite the technological advances of the early 20th Century, humanity had witnessed two world wars and the devastation of atomic bombs.
While technology is often paraded as progress for humanity, Bradbury highlights a pessimistic view of technological advances in the 1950s through the television, automobiles and computers that removes people from their humanity. In the 1950s, the television was just becoming a common technology in households and Bradbury expresses anxiety about the television converting people into mindless, zombie-like masses.
Bradbury’s short story depicts the lack of trust in institutions. By depicting the police car as an entity that is able to decide Leonard’s fate and place him into a psychiatric institution stripped of dignity and freedom.
Additionally, the institution’s name being the “Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies” suggests that modernisations and progress requires people to detach themselves from their humanity and separate themselves from nature in order to progress.
Themes Explored in The Pedestrian
Despite its short story form, The Pedestrian explores several themes within the text, which can be used to help guide your writing:
- Dehumanisation
- Nature VS Technology
- Conformity VS Individualism
- Freedom
- Fear
- Surveillance and Control
The juxtaposition of conformity and individualism is evident throughout the text. Despite Leonard’s seemingly mundane activity of taking a walk in the evening, the empty streets and scrutiny he faces for doing so demonstrate that what he is doing is unusual in his society.
While everyone is at home, captivated by their televisions, Leonard finds fulfilment by doing what he enjoys instead of caving into societal expectations. While he is punished for his non-conformity at the end of the story, readers are left with the impression that he has a richer inner life and sense of self, compared to many others in this lifeless society.
Another particularly interesting theme is technology and dehumanisation. Written in 1951 when the world had just witnessed the destruction of two atomic bombs, Bradbury’s short story reflect society’s anxiety about the detrimental effects of new technology.
The Pedestrian portrays how the television, automobiles and computers will rob individuals of their humanity as all the power is transferred to these machines. Through a portrayal of soulless masses and authoritarian technology, Bradbury reflects many of the anxieties of his time and the issues we continue to face with technology today.
How to Analyse The Pedestrian in 3 Steps
Step 1: Choose your Example
When picking an example ensure that you are able to identify a technique in the text.
For this example, we have chosen to look at Leonard’s pondering as he walks the empty streets:
“What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?”
Step 2: Identify your technique(s)
Ensure that the technique you choose for your quote supports your analysis or helps to build your argument.
For the quote above, rhetorical questions are used to demonstrate Leonard’s desire to connect with others but also his isolation from the rest of society.
Step 3: Write the analysis
When writing the analysis, focus on the effect of the technique and how it supports your argument.
Through Leonard’s rhetorical questions of “What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?”, Bradbury simultaneously demonstrates his isolation from the rest of society despite his innate curiosity and strong desire to connect with others.
Studying this Text for HSC English Module C: The Craft of Writing
Module C’s requirement when analysing a text is slightly different as you are observing how a writer constructs their text and why they construct it in that way to gain a better understanding of how you can make your own writing more effective. Like other units, you will follow a TEE structure in analysing the text but your application of it will be different.
While reading a text for Module C, you should pay attention to the author’s use of a range of language forms and features like imagery, rhetoric, voice, characterisation, point of view, dialogue and tone. You should consider the purpose of the text and its audience, to observe how the author carefully shapes meanings through their writing.
Unlike the other modules, Module C can require you to write imaginatively, discursively, persuasively, informatively and/or reflectively. In the HSC, this will consist of a question that has either one or two parts.
Usually, students are required to provide a creative response followed by an analytical or reflective response to the ideas in the first part.
Due to the nature of this module, it is highly useful to know techniques — not only in identifying them but also in weaving them into your own writing naturally and seamlessly!
Need some help with your analysis of other texts aside from The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury?
Check out other texts we’ve created guides for below:
- Hag-Seed
- Never Let Me Go
- Wild Grapes by Kenneth Slessor
- Blade Runner
- Mabo
- Frank Hurley
- 1984
- Jane Eyre
- Così
- The 7 Stages of Grieving
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Tiffany Fong is currently completing a double degree in Media and Communications with Law at Macquarie University. She currently contributes to the university zine, Grapeshot where she enjoys writing feature articles, commentary on current affairs or whatever weird interest that has taken over her mind during that month. During her spare time, Tiffany enjoys reading, writing, taking care of her plants or cuddling with her two dogs.
