Read the following extract from Ray Bradbury's short story, 'The Pedestrian', and answer the questions that follow: 'Sometimes he (Mead) 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.'
In which year is Bradbury’s story set? What did Leonard Mead ‘most dearly love to do’?
Topic: Setting of the story
Answer
The story is set in the year A.D. 2053 — a future city imagined by Bradbury.
What Leonard Mead most dearly loved was to walk. Every evening he stepped out alone into the silence, walking for hours and miles through the empty streets of the city, looking at the houses and breathing the night air, and returning home only at midnight.
Give the exact year; approximations lose the mark. For the second part, do more than say "walking" — convey that it was a solitary nightly ritual he loved, since the story turns on this harmless pleasure being treated as a crime.