How Does Bradbury Use Imagery In The Pedestrian

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The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury is the story of Leonard Mead, a man who might as well be alone in a world so engrossed with television that people have become lifeless. In this story literary devices such as imagery and metaphor are used to show how Leonard Mead is an outlier in times that are so fixated on television that life has become lifeless. For instance the metaphor "And on his way he would see, the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unlike walking through a graveyard " comparing Mead’s nighttime walks to how it feels to walk through a graveyard describes how the houses are like tombs, dark and still. Also it shows the people in the house being compared to the dead because they have discarded their lives in favor of watching television. …show more content…
Furthermore the simile in the line “his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in the mid-country.” creates the image of Mead, a lone figure, moving smoothly, down the stark street in a place where life is uncommon. Furthering the idea the mead is by himself walking around a lifeless town where everyone is locked away in their homes mindlessly watching television. Later Bradbury uses another simile in the line “He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.” to show how any brightness or life in such a dark bare town is shocking to Mead because it's so uncommon, and how once the shock is over with how alluring it is for Mead because he sees so little life that even bright shining lights are enough to get him excited for the possibility of human interaction. All of which goes to show how literary devices such as imagery and simile in The Pedestrian show how Leonard Mead is an outlier in times that are so consumed by television that life has become a