The Pedestrian

Bradbury’s writing style in “The Pedestrian” combines figurative and poetic language (when channeling the thoughts of the protagonist Mead) and short and curt dialogue (when capturing the conversation between Mead and the automated police car). The following passage—which comes near the beginning of the story as Mead begins his evening walk—captures the poetic nature of Bradbury’s prose:

Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house. And on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open.

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