In “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, the author uses simple, but powerful similes as a gateway to the reader understanding the setting of the story. “The Pedestrian” is the tale of a lone wandering man walking down the street at twilight. The man is then accused of being a criminal and taken back to his home, also known as “The Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.” The similes used in the story help readers fully understand and see the setting of “The Pedestrian”. For example, Bradbury writes “He would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.” The simile used does a great job showing the reader the setting of this scene in the “The Pedestrian”. In this scene a man is walking down the sidewalk kicking up ash-like dust. When the reader sees the image of that man, the reader gets the sense of a content and tranquil situation. To elaborate, Bradbury continues to write “ There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree.” With this simile Bradbury is elaborating on the image created from the previous simile. This simile aids in the reader's understanding or “seeing” the setting. The setting is still of a man walking down the sidewalk kicking up ash-like dust, but …show more content…
Bradbury writes “He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.” With this simile, the man is now transfixed by a bright light and unable to move. This is a major shift in the setting and feel because the reader now feels an anxious or agitated feeling instead of the previous calm and content feeling. This simile leaves the reader wondering who is behind this transfixing light and what will that person do with the protagonist. Bradbury uses this suspense and wondering to allow the reader to really feel what the protagonist is
“...he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone…” The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury is a short story that focuses on the idea of how lonely it can be in a world of technology. Starting the story with Leonard Mead, the pedestrian, walking around the neighborhood and talking to the houses as if they were people not talking to the ghosts within the windows. During mid walk he ran into some trouble with the police leading him into being arrested for walking without a valid purpose. The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury portrays this idea of how lonely it can be in a world of technology by using metaphors, dialogue and symbolism.
In Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” there is an abnormal house that does everything on a set time schedule. In this short story Bradbury uses similes to create setting in his story. For example “Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows”(Bradbury 1). This part of the story is talking about tiny mouse robots come out of the walls to come clean up the house and go right back into their burrows. Using this simile helps give a good idea to the reader of the setting by being able to see how tiny mouse come out to clean then back into their burrows. Another simile Bradbury uses to show setting is “ There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring
In the short story, “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, is an example of dystopian literature. First and foremost, a characteristic of dystopian literature is that citizens live in a dehumanized state. This is shown in the story when, “In the ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.” This quote supports the thesis in that people are not allowed to do the simplest task of walking without reason, or acting without reason. This is a dehumanized state of life, due to there being such a thing as cabin fever, and that it is one of the most common activities of humans. To add to this, “The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead,
Compassion, by definition, is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. In our modern society, compassion plays a major role in the act of kindness. Many people believe that doing a good deed is a selfless act since they do not get nothing in return. Others believe that doing a good deed to make you feel good about yourself is selfish. It is a theory that causes you to ponder on the purpose of compassion. In Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay, On Compassion, she contemplates this theory. By using a variety of writing techniques, Ascher is able to share her views on compassion in way that speaks to the audience.
One is simile from the book Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis is on page 16-17.
In his poem, Flames and Dangling Wire, the first line immediately sets the scene allowing us to have a sense of where we are. The use of a simile in “The smoke of different fires in a row, like fingers spread and dragged to smudge” implies the filthiness of the tip and the smoke rising from the fires. This also causes the air to
The interplay of dark and light motifs underlies the narrator’s most recent hardship. On his way home on the subway, the narrator comes across his brother’s name in a newspaper and “stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside” (Baldwin). Riding in the light of the subway car, the author makes the non-suspecting narrator subject to suffering, unguarded by the protective cloak of the outside darkness. Made vulnerable by the exposed light and people surrounding him, the narrator is hit harder by the unexpected news than if he had read it in the darkness of his private room. Under the “swinging lights,” the narrator is not prepared to cope with the troubling news. This emphasizes the importance of light as a symbol for one’s need of camouflage to properly cope with tragedy.
Bradbury uses a lot of imagery in the passage because it was in the beginning of the book and he wanted the readers to understand what was happening. “He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark.” , this was a very detailed phrase of imagery because it gave the readers great idea of what
Throughout the beginning of the passage, the author uses an array of different rhetorical devices to give us a glimpse about Douglas Spaulding's feelings towards the beginning of summer.Ray Bradbury utilizes personification in sentences 1 through 5. For example "The town covered over with darkness...the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow." The author drives a clear picture of a mysterious atmosphere by the use of the word "Darkness". By adding "The wind had the proper touch."
I’m Ray Bradbury’s excerpt Dandelions Wine, he uses a variety of rhetorical devices to express Douglas’s excitement for the returning of a “magical summer.” Bradbury begins this excerpt with personification that describes the town’s atmosphere at the beginning of the day. In line 2, he starts off by saying, ”the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed.” He uses this rhetorical device to give the readers a feeling of how Douglas views his neighborhood that morning. He then continues with metaphors to further describe that morning.
Similes also help readers understand many different themes throughout the novel. One can understand a story better if they can figure out what the main theme is. Figurative language can
“The Scarlet Ibis,” a short story by James Hurst, incorporates many similes that give the reader a better description of the story. Embarrassed by his crippled brother, the narrarator tries to teach Doodle how to walk, and the first time, Doodle “collapsed onto the grass like a half-empty flour sack” (419). This shows Doodle was not ready to learn how to walk and his brother is asking too much of him. Later, Doodle overcomes this challenge and learns to walk, but that is still not good enough for his brother. After the narrator decides he’s going to teach Doodle how to swim, run, and climb trees, he believes “success lay at the end of summer like a pot of gold” (420). Using this simile is a representation of “luck” much like the “luck” that
“The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst is a short story about a man looking back on his childhood and his experience with his little brother, Doodle. The author uses simile to foreshadow the ending of the story and to show the theme. One of the first examples of is when the protagonist’s parents decide on a name for their child, “They named him William Armstrong, which was like tying a big tail on a small kite,” (Hurst) The simile foreshadows the ending because it is exactly what happens in the ending. After the protagonist teaches his brother how to walk, he decides to train Doodle to fight, run, and swim.
The narrator has a usage of similes show up in the book several times. “Hans Hubermann held his hand out and presented a piece of bread, like magic.” To the Jewish prisoner
Not only are the similes potentially overlooked, they also create a bigger problem in deterring readers from finding the more interesting themes, such as truth and loyalty, in the novel. If they skim over the similes, they will most likely skim over some of these important, and interesting, themes. His interactions with