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 the given extract, what does Bradbury compare Mead’s experience of walking through the city late at night to? List two reasons why you would consider the comparison suitable.
Topic: The graveyard comparison
Answer
He compares it to walking through a graveyard.
The comparison is suitable because: (1) the streets are utterly silent and deserted — no people, no voices, no movement anywhere, exactly as in a cemetery; and (2) the houses stand dark and tomb-like, showing only the faint, flickering grey light of the television screens behind the windows, like fireflies over graves. The people inside are alive but as good as dead — motionless, silent, unaware — so the city is indeed a burial ground of the living.
Name the comparison first, then give two clearly separated reasons — the marks are allotted that way. The point worth reaching in a strong answer is that Bradbury does not merely mean the city is quiet: he means its inhabitants have stopped living, which is the story’s warning about a screen-numbed society.