The Future In Bradbury's The Pedestrian, A Sound of Thunder, and Embroidery

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a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows." (The Pedestrian)

Bradbury writes about walking as if in a graveyard and the houses being like tombs. People are hiding behind the walls of their homes like zombies. This has been happening for years with no difference. 'Mead' has for the past ten years gone out for a walk every evening and never met anyone before. He walks past one house and thinks he may hear the sound of laughter, but then moves on because he hears nothing more.

Bradbury portrays 'Mead' being as an 'alien' in a strange land. He appears to want to live a different kind of lifestyle to the rest of the society he is living in. 'Mead' seems like he is the last vestige of humanity in a society of soulless people. He would like some company and to have interaction with other people. However, in this view of the future none is forthcoming and isolation and desolation are all around. Nobody is out on the ...

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'Embroidery' it seems that Bradbury uses the story to make a political statement about the destruction of civilisation by a nuclear explosion. This story was written in 1951, shortly after the end of WW2 and at a time when this sort of catastrophe was very much in people's minds. Bradbury uses the fear that people have regarding nuclear warfare and the end of the world to get across a message about how things could be in the future. The women in the story are acting as though this thing is inevitable and that there is nothing that they can do about it but sit and wait.

The word picture painted at the beginning of the story is a domestic scene which could have been taken from ...

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