for “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury
Objectives
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1. To help students understand how a highly developed technological society will shape people’s lives.
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2. To give students experience in writing an original essay about an imaginary society and a comparison and contrast essay.
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3. To increase student’s understanding of technical terms.
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4. To assist students in gaining experience in critical reading.
Introducing the story
“The Pedestrian” takes place inthe year A.D. 2131 “in a city of three million,” when Mr. Leonard Mead decides to take a walk alone on a “misty evening in November”. Often he would walk for miles comparing the scenes he passed to a graveyard. The streets were empty and silent as all the people were in their airconditioned, tomblike houses watching T.V. Returning, only a block from his house, he was accosted by a lone police car with a radio voice that questioned him; then peremptorily told him to get inside. The radio computer directed the car “To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies”.
Suggestion: Ask students what this brief synopsis arouses in their minds. Ask students to list many highly automated machines or things that would have seemed very futuristic seventy-five years ago such as colored television, computers, cassettes, air-conditioning, automatic doors and climate control.
Vocabulary development
What do the following terms mean? Try to figure out their meanings from their context in the story and explain them to the class:
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intersection
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scarab beetles
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intermittent
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entranced
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phantoms
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illumination
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manifest
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accusation
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United States Calvalry
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antiseptic
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Regressive Tendencies
Discussion questions
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1. What do people do in this advanced society for entertainment?
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2. Find descriptions in the story that use metaphors and similes. Do they give a mental image of what is described?
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3. What is the theme or the answer that the story suggests to the main question that it raises in your mind?
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4. What face of the city—the brighter or darker side—is mirrored here? Why?
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5. What complications make things difficult for Mr. Leonard Mead?
Enrichment and writing activities
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1. Compare and contrast “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury and “A Day in Megalopolis” by Zenna Henderson. Show what the important similarities and differences are. Which do you think is the most believable story? the most effective story?
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2. Write a story of a future society where all the open spaces and natural places have disappeared.
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3. How is technology and increased population changing your city? Write a future story that envisions what your city will be like in the year 2000. Include the following:
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a. men and woman work a shortened day
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b. poverty, war and reduced resources have forced people to make everything they need
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c. housing, transportation, schools, shopping, medicine and government
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4. Write a three paragraph essay comparing and contrasting the society in “A Day in Megalopolis” with our present one.
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5. Write about a future society in a stream-of-consciousness style. Let your mind brainstorm and write your thoughts down as they come to you.
From:
The Urban Reader
pp. 370-374.