Technology In The Pedestrian By Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury, an author of many short stories or prose fictions, but more importantly the author of The Pedestrian and There will come soft rains. Bradbury constructs his stories in order to portray particular ideas of the future and the role in which technology would have on the lives of people of future generations. In The pedestrian Bradbury talks of a man named Leonard Mead, who has not yet come to terms with the taking over of technology and still lives in the ‘era’ where communication between one another was the norm, but through various narrative techniques he shows readers that he is alone in that ‘era’ where technology has totally broken down communication between people to the point where it is almost non-existent. In Bradbury’s other

story There will come soft rains which is based during the times of the cold war, where a town was destroyed and faced with extinction by an atomic bomb but the advancements of technology allowed one house to stay standing in which was self servicing and continued to perform duties unaware that the family who lived there had gone, through an array of narrative techniques Bradbury portrayed to readers that despite how much technology can grow, nature will always be able to defeat it.

In Ray Bradbury’s first short story The Pedestrian, he portrays the idea that technology is taking over society and its ability to communicate with one another through the character of an old fashioned man by the name of Leonard Mead who is living in the future during the year of 2052 where he longs for communication between people, but the future of technology, in this case, television, has ceased all communication in society to where is no longer exists, the streets are empty, and police are no longer needed because crime has also ceased to exist due to no one leaving their houses. Bradbury has used imagery to portray the idea of death in society, “it was not unlike walking through a graveyard”. This shows readers how not only Leonard Mead- the main character, but how Bradbury imagined the future where he saw empty streets and concrete houses with darkened windows that had a faint flicker of light behind them reminded him of the darkness and dehumanising dystopian future technology had for us. To some extent I agree with Bradbury’s interpretation of technology taking over, there is evidence of this in society today, people would rather shop online than actually go to a store to purchase things, or text message rather than talking face to face or even a phone call, but I also think technology can benefit us in a lot of ways, where we have unlimited access to opportunities and information right at our fingertips.

“If man kind advances to the point where society loses its humanity, then man kind may as well cease to exist” is a quote by an anonymous source which depicts the idea that if technology is only going to progress the need for human life is no longer necessary.

This quote relates to The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury where Mr Mead is in the midst of his daily routine of walking the streets, which at this time in society is a strange thing because being inside your home watching your viewing screen was considered the norm, is pulled up by the only remaining police car in the city. When pulled up by police car, Bradbury repeats the word ‘metallic’ during the dialogue between the police car and Mr Mead which gives the effect of dehumanisation along with the fact there was no actual police officer and technology had advanced so much that an actual human officer was no longer needed. Bradbury also portrayed another idea of the dehumanising and un-natural factors of the police car through imagery, “it smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clear and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there”. When asked many questions by the police car, Mr Mead explains that he is a writer, but to much surprise the police car does not understand his occupation as nobody bought books, magazines or newspapers during a television and technology dominated society. Once again I do agree with the ideas that have been portrayed in this story, technology has made it very

easy to ignore the simplest things such as newspaper because it has become so easy to look it up online or purchase magazines and self reading books and have it all on one portable tablet, than to have the physical thing and have to take it them everywhere with you.

In the second story by Ray Bradbury, There will come soft rains, he also portrays the idea that technology has overtaken society but by the resolution of the story he demonstrates to us that despite all, nature will always defeat the progression of technology over time. The story was set in the 1980’s a not so distant future, where Bradbury imagined a self servicing house that ran like a well oiled machine. “The house was like many another house in that year ; it fed and slept and entertained its inhabitants, and made a good life for them”. “And then one day the world shook and there was an explosion followed by ten thousand explosions and red fire in the sky and a rain of ashes and radio activity, and the happy time was over”. This shows us through imagery the setting of the story which was during the Cold War era, a battle of nuclear weapons, where a towns humanity was destroyed by an atomic bomb except for this one house that stayed standing throughout it all, which gives the impression that technology is indestructible and can never go backward and regress, only move forward and become more powerful. The ideas that Bradbury is trying to portray to readers is relevant to todays society, because, people are always wanting ‘more’ from technology and wanting to know what will come next, so technology is only becoming more powerful and is almost impossible or at least highly unlikely that it will ever regress because the ‘want’ for it to advance has become to hard to deter away from.

In There will come soft rains, by Ray Bradbury, he includes a poem by Sara Teasdale in which the self servicing house picks to read seeing as there is no longer any occupants to have preference over what poems were read.

Bradbury chose to include this poem to draw attention to the role in which nature plays. It describes how other living things, implicitly nature as a whole, is unaffected by an event of human extinction as a result of nuclear war and how nature will carry on living . “And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone”. This implies that seasons come and go and not one season or day will recognise that humanity nor technology does no longer exist. In the resolution of the story, Bradbury uses a falling tree in which destroys the technology fuelled house as a symbol that nature rules over all and has a power in which nobody can control portraying it as the forever more dominant voice in the world compared to technology. Nature is an uncontrollable force, we can predict what will happen, but will never really know for sure the capabilities of it. Technology is just a thing that we as humans create and have control over, but in a second can be destroyed by mother nature showing that it has true dominance over

everything.
Ray Bradbury’s stories convey true underlying messages that society has been overtaken by technology and its advancements, but through various narrative techniques in his stories he is able to portray to us that nature will alway be a force to be reckoned with, not humans nor technology will ever be able to equal or compare to the power nature has over us and also the lack of concern for anything other than itself when it comes to survival and dominance.