This path was created by Alison Morgan.
"The Pedestrian"
Born on August 22, 1920, Ray Bradbury started his career as a fantasy and science fiction
writer in 1938 when he published his first piece of work in Forrest J. Ackerman’s magazine
Imagination. From there, Bradbury’s career only improved until he eventually received distinguished awards such as the Pulitzer Prize and an Emmy. Some his most well-known works include titles such as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. A common theme amongst his collected works is the prediction and examination of hypothetical dystopian futures for our society. Such predictions are usually extrapolated from an aspect of the society in which Bradbury lives.
Among Bradbury’s works of short fiction is “The Pedestrian,” published in 1951, which
encapsulates many of the ideas presented in his later works. The story centers on a man, Mr. Leonard Mead, out for a late-night stroll in the year 2053. He habitually strolls the streets at night and as he is walking, he peers into people’s homes and murmurs thoughts to himself. At this point in the future, due to technological advancement and progress, the past time of going for a stroll has become something abnormal and regressive.
This night, he says “’hello, in there,’ he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. ‘What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9?’” The man continues walking
like this until, unexpectedly, one of the few police cars left in town pulls up to arrest him. After some protest, the man reluctantly climbs into the police car and “moved down the empty river-bed streets and off away” to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.(Bradbury, Ray).
”The Pedestrian” is one of Bradbury’s first works that highlights the idea that as
technology advances within a society, people tend to become more insulated from each other and the outside world. It is evident that such an insular society would find it difficult to maintain the same social and environmental values as one that required its citizens to interact with each other and their environment.
Analysis:
The purpose of art in general is to inspire an emotional response in a viewer. Green art is a specific type of art that aims to inspire an emotional connection to nature through a variety of mediums. In other words, green art is a subdivision of artistic work that establishes an emotional response in a viewer while recognizing that the global ecosystem in which we live is an inherently delicate system. Green literature is a further subdivision of green art that focuses on the written word. Typically, green art and green literature examine how humans alter and interact with their environment.
“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury was published in 1951, the same decade that his most influential titles such as “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Martian Chronicles” were published. Bearing in mind that “The Pedestrian” was written prior to the idea of anthropocentric climate change, this work can still be interpreted in the light of green literature. Although this was not the original intent of the author when “The Pedestrian” was published, the development of ecocriticism as a genre of literary analysis has allowed for a new interpretation of this classic work of short fiction.
In “The Pedestrian,” Ray Bradbury imagines a world 100 years in the future by extrapolating from the current trends in the 1950’s. Specifically, “The Pedestrian” examines the lifestyle of a future society and how their relationship to the environment developed based on the information on hand in the 1950’s. The short story can be read as a cautionary tale where Bradbury warns that, based on current social and technological trends, our collective future is going to look something like what is described in “The Pedestrian.” Bradbury paints the picture of an almost entirely insular society where people sequester themselves in their homes at all times. He describes these homes as “tombs, ill-lit by the television light where the people sat like the dead”(Bradbury, Ray).
This picture of society as described by Bradbury is not too distant from our current reality in 2016. According to a study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, the typical American spends “an average of 87% of their time in enclosed buildings and about 6% of their time in enclosed vehicles”(Kleipis, Neil E). This leaves about 7% of the average American’s time left for being outdoors. Furthermore, another study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the average American devotes about 18% of their waking hours to television(United States Department of Labor). This reality is very similar to Bradbury’s prediction of a society where nearly everyone spends their lives entirely indoors and in front of the television.
Bradbury’s dystopian vision of the future has been nearly realized only 65 years after its publication. The accuracy of Bradbury’s depiction of the future bears one striking implication: how we interact with the environment follows the same trends as those in the 1950’s even after climate science has uncovered the devastating global effects of such a lifestyle. Since “The Pedestrian” was written prior to any notion of climate change, Bradbury’s vision of the future was predicted without any significant change in human behavior due to the work of countless activists to stave off the looming threat of climate change. The fact that Bradbury vision of the future is so close to our reality today shows that our lifestyle has developed naturally and relatively unaltered out of the lifestyle typical in the 1950’s despite the powerful insights climate scientists have discovered.
In order to understand the implications of how this predicted society lives, we must first examine what factors shape a person’s interests. Understanding what makes people care enough about something to dedicate their time and energy to it will allow us to take a closer look at exactly what Bradbury’s dystopian future entails. Ultimately, what a person experiences frequently on a day to day basis is the most influential factor that shapes what they care about. For example the average American may care very deeply about the health of a loved one or the quality of their own career because such issues affect them significantly on a daily basis. However, the average American probably doesn’t devote a lot of thought to the plight of the Bonobo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo because the threat of their extinction does not affect the day to day life of someone half a world away.
It would seem, then, that what one allows into his everyday life shapes his opinions and motivations. This is a fairly self-evident assertion that carries enormous repercussions when considering changes in the way a society as whole tends to live. Considering how important the factors of our everyday lives are, people are relatively careless about what they allow into their lives. Both in “The Pedestrian” and in America today, people devote much of their attention to the indoor environment and specifically, to their television. With only 7% of the average American’s time devoted to being outdoors, it is more likely that the local environment, not to mention the global ecosystem, is not in the forefront of people’s minds.
Despite the similarities between the reality of 2016 and the future envisioned by Bradbury, there are still several points where his predictions are far more dystopian than our reality today. For example, in Bradbury’s world, it is not simply against the social norm to walk outside, it appears to be completely illegal. Even though Americans spend most of their time inside, it is by no means against the law to go for a walk outside as it is in the story. On the surface, it appears to be a ridiculous idea that someone could get into trouble for going out for a stroll as in “The Pedestrian.”
However, it is evident that once an activity has fallen out of common practice, seeing someone engaging in it would be met with apprehension from the rest of the community. With the average person spending more and more of their time indoors, it is not too difficult to imagine that seeing someone spending their recreational time outside will seem completely out of the ordinary. With the advent of the internet, unfathomable in the 1950’s, there is now essentially an entire world of entertainment inside of every home across the developed world. With this in mind, it is almost inevitable that people will spend nearly all of their recreational hours indoors, leaving the act of going outdoors for pleasure a relic of the past. Although it may not happen even by 2053, it is not out of the realm of possibility that going outside for recreation may become taboo at some point in the future and anyone engaging in it may be hauled off “to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies” as Mr. Mead was(Bradbury, Ray).
On the surface, this may all seem like pointless speculation, but the implications of a society completely confined to being indoors are enormous and therefore should be taken seriously. As stated earlier, the surroundings in which people find themselves tend to dominate or at least strongly influence most of their concerns. Currently, there is a considerable amount of attention placed on the health and psychological benefits of being outdoors. This kind of focus on the world outside inspires a culture of appreciation for nature and therefore an enthusiasm for reducing the effects of climate change. If the outside world is no longer included in the day to day life of the average person, then the environmental impacts of such a person’s lifestyle are no longer encountered daily and, as a result, forgotten. This is the exact opposite kind of social change necessary to reverse or even slow down the looming threat of climate change.
Bradbury’s vision of the future was extrapolated from the current technological and social trends of the 1950’s. It was already visible in that time period that as a society, we were starting to seclude ourselves from each other and the outside world in favor of spending our recreational time indoors. The implications of such a lifestyle are not only detrimental to physical and mental health, but also to the global ecosystem as a whole. Such reclusive lives require many more resources than those that live in harmony with their surroundings.
An antidote to this insular society seems to be offered by Bradbury in Mr. Mead who disobeys the social curfew and seeks to escape the reclusive lifestyle that has become norm. Bradbury describes Mr. Mead’s late night walk with a pastoral sense of contentment as he proceeds to put his “feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do”(Bradbury, Ray). This sort of language seems to support the hypothesis that Bradbury sees Mr. Mead’s behavior as being valuable especially in a society that does not value the outside world.
Mr. Mead represents a virtue that that has not developed as much as it should have in modern society and seems to have diminished substantially in Bradbury’s society. He is able to take a step back and evaluate the way the rest of society is living with a critical eye. Mr. Mead is able to conclude that the social order is flawed and doesn’t alter his behavior to fit the new social construct. A world where such introspective behavior is met with the social and legal castigation as seen in “The Pedestrian” is a step backward anthropologically. The development of human civilization should be moving toward a society where introspective thought and correcting detrimental social customs should be the norm.
With this in mind, “The Pedestrian” should be read as a warning from the past that based on current trends, this is a plausible prediction of what our collective future could look like. If this progression into Bradbury’s dystopian future continues, situations as those seen in “The Pedestrian” will not seem out of the ordinary. This, combined with the insights uncovered by climate scientists, paints the picture of a society that cannot be sustained. Within a short period of time, such a society will have depleted all of the world’s resources without any attempt by the general populace to stave off the economic collapse that would follow. In order to avoid such a catastrophe, ardent social change in the way we live and consume resources is the only way to have enough of an impact on such a large scale.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. The Pedestrian. Place of Publication Not Identified: Printed by R.A. Squires, 1951. Print. Link
Klepeis, Neil E., William C. Nelson, Wayne R. Ott, John P. Robinson, Andy M. Tsang, Paul Switzer, Joseph V. Behar, Stephen C. Hern, and William H. Engelmann. The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): A Resource for Assessing Exposure to Environmental Pollutants. Publication no. 7500165. N.p.: Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology, 2001. Print.
United States Department of Labor. AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY — 2014 RESULTS. Rep. no. USDL-15-1236. N.p.: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014. Print.
