Technology In The Pedestrian By Ray Bradbury

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Ray Bradbury once said “I don’t try to describe the future. I just try to prevent it.” Ray Bradbury was worried about the effects that technology could/ would have on families in the future. Through these stories he used so many things to get his point across about the things that technology can do. He used personification, symbolism, and word choice. He really shows his themes in all the stories, and how he feels about the use of technology. "Magazines and books didn't sell anymore. Everything went on in the tomb-like houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the grey or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them." (The Pedestrian.) …show more content…
Normally people can cook their own breakfast, or give their children baths, and clean up their houses. Just like normally kids can brush their teeth and brush their own hair. But why do it when you can have technology do it for you faster and most likely more do it better.
In all four of the stories we get this sense that the use of technology makes people uncomfortable. In the story There Will Come Soft Rains we don’t see the effects of the house on the family because there is no family in the story, but the way that he makes the story out to be you can tell that he made the house very handy in the lives of the family that did at one point live there. In There Will Come Soft Rains, there may not be any negative told effects that the house had on the people living there, but all the other stories had very negative aftermaths with …show more content…
I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you. You've been awfully nervous lately." "I suppose I have been smoking too much." "You look as if you didn't know what to do with yourself in this house." (The Veldt.) This quote to me really shows how the technology was a good idea at first, then how they became too dependent on it, how it then made them uncomfortable, and how eventually it ended up being something that worked against them in the end. That’s what he was using to get his point across. I see that pattern in all the stories that we read. Bradbury stressed that he didn’t want to describe the future he just wanted to prevent it. Throughout all of these stories he was showing us the effects that technology can have on us if we don’t use it in the way that we are supposed to be using. It’s meant to be there to help us but not to be something that we use to take over our
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