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.'
Where is Mead taken to at the end of the story? What observation does the author make about Mead’s house as the police car drives through the street?
Topic: The ending
Answer
He is taken to the Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies — a place for those whose behaviour no longer fits the society.
As the car passes his house, Bradbury notes that it alone stood brightly lit, every window ablaze in the dark street. The car drives on through the empty avenues, leaving the one lighted house behind — a last image of the single living mind in a city of darkness.
The second part is a symbolism question in disguise. Do not merely report that the house was lit — explain that the light stands for Mead’s wakeful, thinking individuality against the darkened, screen-lit conformity of every other house, and that the car driving past it is the state removing the last such light.