the pedestrian short story essay

Ray Bradbury: Short Stories

By ray bradbury, ray bradbury: short stories summary and analysis of "the pedestrian".

"The Pedestrian" offers a glance into the future, where a man, Leonard Mead , goes for long walks every evening by himself. The year is 2053, and Mr. Mead is the only pedestrian near his home. He has never seen another person out walking during the many hours that he has strolled. He lives by himself - he has no wife, and so it is a tradition for him to walk every evening. It is never said explicitly in the story, but it can be understood that he is the only, or one of the only, walker in society.

On this particular evening, a police car stops him and orders him to put his hands up. He answers a series of questions about his life and family, and his answers are unsatisfactory to the police. This car is the only remaining police car in the area. After the election last year, the force was reduced from three cars to one because crime was ebbing and they were seen as unnecessary. When Mr. Mead answers the question of employment by saying he is a writer, the police interpret his answer as "unemployed." They order him to enter the car despite his protests, and as he approaches he realizes there is no driver at all - the car is automated.

Mr. Mead is filled with fear as he sits down in the cell-like backseat. The car informs him that he is being taken to a psychiatric center because of his regressive tendencies. His behavior is not acceptable in society - no one walks anymore and it is queer that he continues to do so as his primary hobby. En route, they pass his house, which is the only house that is lit up and inviting to the outside eye. Mr. Mead's behavior is completely atypical of the society in which he lives.

Once again, Bradbury shows his skepticism of technology and "progress" in "The Pedestrian." In this story, a popular pastime is viewed as regressive, outdated, and abnormal. Mr. Mead's behavior is deemed threatening even though it is not hurting anyone - the powers in charge believe that his determination to walk every night could upset their social stability. He does not have a viewing screen in his house, which is expected of the members of this society. His behavior proposes an alternative activity that the government does not approve of, and this threatens their monopoly on control.

The act of ostracizing someone who is different than the rest of the group appears again, which is a common theme in Bradbury's stories. The police car, a representative of the powers in control, disapprove of his behavior, but the entire society disapproves as well. Ostracizing him is another form of censorship. His lit up house is symbolic of his difference from the rest of society. He is very easily identified as someone who is different.

The story calls into question the idea of progress for the sake of progress. An automated police car is programmed to stop Mr. Mead, even though he has not committed an offense. There is no room for human discretion and judgment in a world that is fully automated. Additionally, the viewing screen is considered a way to distract the public and keep them under the watchful eye of the government. A roaming public that is out walking is much harder to control than one that is stationed in front of its television set. Thus Bradbury's story raises the question of, "What does progress really mean? Is advancement, regardless of the consequences, a positive step in the right direction?"

Additionally, this story highlights the dangers and "slippery slope" of a government determining what is best for a group of people without their input. What exactly does "regressive tendencies" mean, and who has decided that walking means being regressive? Does our society resemble that of the pedestrian's, and if it does, is that a good or bad thing? Once again, Bradbury's stories prompt us to reflect on our surroundings and continue to be relevant despite a different temporal age.

Ray Bradbury: Short Stories Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Ray Bradbury: Short Stories is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

From the story There Will Come Soft Rains- In what way does the information you learned shed light on an aspect of the story?

Check out the story analysis in GradeSaver's study guide for Bradbury's short stories. I think you will find what you are looking for there. If you need additional information, feel free to ask. Pay close attention to the section talking about...

What rules are referred to as silly rules and why

I'm sorry, which of Bradbury's short stories are you referring to?

The Flying Machine

The Emperor explains to the flier that he fears that an evil man will manipulate the technology and destroy its beauty - for instance using the flying machine to throw rocks down upon the Great Wall of China. The Emperor says to the inventor,...

Study Guide for Ray Bradbury: Short Stories

Ray Bradbury: Short Stories study guide contains a biography of Ray Bradbury, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of select short stories.

• About Ray Bradbury: Short Stories
• Ray Bradbury: Short Stories Summary
• Character List

Essays for Ray Bradbury: Short Stories

Ray Bradbury: Short Stories essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of select short stories by Ray Bradbury.

• Ray Bradbury Hates Technology: Analyzing "The Pedestrian"
• "There Will Come Soft Rains": From Poem to Story
• Contextual Study of Science Fiction Texts, and Intertextual Ideas that Transcend Time: "The Pedestrian," "Harrison Bergeron," and Equilibrium
• The Power of Technology: Comparing "Rocket Summer," "There Will Come Soft Rains," and Fahrenheit 451
• “…The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton …”:A Postmodern Reading of Ray Bradbury’s “The Will Come Soft Rains”

Lesson Plan for Ray Bradbury: Short Stories

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Ray Bradbury: Short Stories
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Ray Bradbury: Short Stories Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Ray Bradbury: Short Stories

• Introduction

Ray Bradbury: The Pedestrian

“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury is a short story set in a futuristic city in the year 2053. The plot revolves around Leonard Mead, a man who enjoys walking alone through the city streets at night. In a world where television has replaced social interactions and people remain locked inside their homes, Mead’s walks stand out as an unusual activity. The story follows Mead on one of his nighttime walks and explores themes such as conformity, alienation, and the impact of technology on society. Bradbury’s narrative is evocative and reflective, providing a critical look at a dystopian future where basic human activities have become obsolete.

The Pedestrian

Ray Bradbury (Full text)

To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of A.D. 2053, or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.

Sometimes he 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. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open.

Mr Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk. For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.

On this particular evening he began his journey in a westerly direction, toward the hidden sea. There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made the lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow. He listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction, and whistled a cold quiet whistle between his teeth, occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.

‘Hello, in there,’ he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. ‘What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?’

The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in midcountry. If he closed his eyes and stood very still, frozen, he could imagine himself upon the center of a plain, a wintry, windless American desert with no house in a thousand miles, and only dry riverbeds, the streets, for company.

‘What is it now?’ he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. ‘Eightthirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?’

Was that a murmur of laughter from within a moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing more happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk. The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass. In 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.

He came to a cloverleaf intersection which stood silent where two main highways crossed the town. During the day it was a thunderous surge of cars, the gas stations open, a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far directions. But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season, all stone and bed and moon radiance.

He turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home. He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.

A metallic voice called to him:

‘Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!’

‘Put up your hands!’

‘But—’ he said.

‘Your hands up! Or we’ll shoot!’

The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only  one  police car left, wasn’t that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets.

‘Your name?’ said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn’t see the men in it for the bright light in his eyes.

‘Leonard Mead,’ he said.

‘Speak up!’

‘Leonard Mead!’

‘Business or profession?’

‘I guess you’d call me a writer.’

‘No profession,’ said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

‘You might say that,’ said Mr Mead. He hadn’t written in years. Magazines and books didn’t sell anymore. Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching  them .

‘No profession,’ said the phonograph voice, hissing. ‘What are you doing out?’

‘Walking,’ said Leonard Mead.

‘Just walking,’ he said simply, but his face felt cold.

‘Walking, just walking, walking?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Walking where? For what?’

‘Walking for air. Walking to see.’

‘Your address!’

‘Eleven South Saint James Street.’

‘And there is air  in  your house, you have an  air conditioner , Mr Mead?’

‘And you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?’

‘No?’ There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.

‘Are you married, Mr Mead?’

‘Not married,’ said the police voice behind the fiery beam. The moon was high and clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent.

‘Nobody wanted me,’ said Leonard Mead with a smile.

‘Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to!’

Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.

‘Just  walking , Mr Mead?’

‘But you haven’t explained for what purpose.’

‘I explained; for air, and to see, and just to walk.’

‘Have you done this often?’

‘Every night for years.’

The police car sat in the center of the street with its radio throat faintly humming.

‘Well, Mr Mead,’ it said.

‘Is that all?’ he asked politely.

‘Yes,’ said the voice. ‘Here.’ There was a sigh, a pop. The back door of the police car sprang wide. ‘Get in.’

‘Wait a minute, I haven’t done anything!’

‘I protest!’

He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.

He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there.

‘Now if you had a wife to give you an alibi,’ said the iron voice. ‘But—’

‘Where are you taking me?’

The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. ‘To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.’

He got in. The door shut with a soft thud. The police car rolled through the night avenues, flashing its dim lights ahead.

They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.

‘That’s  my  house,’ said Leonard Mead.

No one answered him.

The car moved down the empty riverbed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty sidewalks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.

Related content:

Silvina Ocampo: The House Made of Sugar

Ernest Hemingway: Indian Camp

Isaac Asimov: The Fun They Had

Ray Bradbury: The Exiles

Nuevo en lecturia.

H. P. Lovecraft: In the Vault

H. P. Lovecraft: The Tree

Charles Dickens: The Black Veil

Robert Louis Stevenson: Faith, Half-faith and No Faith At All 

Oscar wilde: the nightingale and the rose, leave a comment cancel reply.

Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Impact of Technology — The Pedestrian By Ray Bradbury Theme

The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury Theme

• Categories: Impact of Technology

About this sample

Words: 1115 |

Published: Mar 25, 2024

Words: 1115 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Information Science and Technology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

6 pages / 2691 words

3 pages / 1205 words

1 pages / 599 words

2 pages / 854 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Impact of Technology

Technology undoubtedly enriches our lives, offering endless opportunities for learning, connection, and convenience. However, as the dependence on technology among teenagers continues to rise, it's crucial to recognize both [...]

The evolution of drone technology has sparked remarkable innovations across industries, transforming the way we perceive tasks, collect data, and interact with our environment. This essay delves into the multifaceted realm of [...]

The impact of technology on teenage life today is vast and diverse. The benefits of connectivity, learning, and self-expression are counterbalanced by challenges related to mental health, physical well-being, and privacy. [...]

The impact of technology on daily life is multifaceted, touching upon communication, work, education, entertainment, health, and more. As we navigate the digital landscape, it is imperative to recognize the opportunities and [...]

The influence of media and technology pervades every corner of society, captivating individuals worldwide. From children to adults, the consumption of media and technology is ubiquitous, shaping daily routines and perceptions. [...]

In the beginning of the 21th century, humanity is entering a new stage of its development, when the scenarios of technological improvement of human nature cease to look fantastic. Initially, the creation of new biomedical [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

THE STORY: On Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Pedestrian”

• 2021 , Essays , Personal Essay , Prose , The Story , Week 4 , Winter 2021
• January 26, 2021

STEPPING OUT ONTO THE STREET in front of my apartment block for an evening walk earlier this month, I was struck by the utter silence and emptiness around me. The night was very cold, with a brilliant frost sharpening the edges of the buildings that added a surreal quality to the neighbourhood. I quickly remembered that the 9pm curfew I’d forgotten about was still being imposed but was suddenly gripped by a powerful urge to continue my walk and began moving away from my front door, towards the park at the end of my street. In my defence, I’d come down the 154 steps from my fifth-floor apartment and didn’t feel like climbing them again right at that second. I’ve been working from home since early March last year, sitting at my kitchen table, eating badly, and writing about new technologies  —  a pretty claustrophobic situation — so the openness of space, along with the beauty of the buildings and the clarity of the frozen air created the kind of sacred atmosphere we can sometimes experience when confronted by a total absence of people. I’d prepared a vacuum flask of hot milk, honey, and quite a bit of rum, and cracked it open as I entered the deeper silence of the park, every sound magnified by the frost and the clear night air. I decided to do one quick round of the park, take in the view over the city, drink my hot toddy, then head back home.

The sound of my shoes crunching in the light snow that had started drifting down, the silence, my happiness within the silence, and the fact that I was constantly scanning for the police who I knew must be patrolling the park, took my mind right back to 2010 when I first read “ The Pedestrian “ by the American writer, Ray Bradbury, the story I want to talk about. I was in Nepal with my ex-girlfriend and things were going badly. Thousands of miles from home, in a collapsing relationship, without money, in a beautiful country, surrounded by human beings, I was profoundly alone, sad, and failed. I needed something to hold onto. Something to show me a way out of my loneliness.

During one of our strictly scheduled walks through Kathmandu to see things my partner had colour-coded in our Lonely Planet guide, I spotted a second-hand bookshop and subverted our program by dipping inside to find a space rammed from floor to ceiling with books, many in English. Books are a lifeline and a currency when you’re traveling. They attain an even higher meaning and value in foreign places where journeys can be long. The first one I pulled from the shelf was a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. I’ve long since lost the book but it must have been a copy of “The Golden Apples of the Sun” (1953) because that’s the only collection which contains his remarkable story, “The Pedestrian”. 

Set in a dystopian world where going outside is forbidden and everyone is supposed to stay home in front of a screen and where, since election year, the police force has been cut to one automated patrol car, the story begins with a man, Mr. Leonard Mead, out for a walk one evening: “To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o’clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do. He would stand upon the corner of an intersection and peer down long moonlit avenues of sidewalk in four directions, deciding which way to go, but it really made no difference; he was alone in this world of 2053 A.D., or as good as alone, and with a final decision made, a path selected, he would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.”

The sense of freedom, even before we find out why Leonard’s walk is a rebellious act, is clear, as is his upbeat sense of self-possession. Here’s a man at ease with himself, alone, and walking in the direction he feels like going in. He strides with instinctual ease, led by his own sense of aesthetic appreciation. In this short paragraph, Bradbury introduces sense itself as a key to perception. Leonard uses his senses to navigate, to perceive the things around him, and to decide which direction to go in. Only later do we learn that he is breaking a curfew. In truth, he’s breaking the most dangerous thing of all — mandates which have grown to not only be accepted by society but enthusiastically taken up and amplified.

Note how Bradbury uses the infinitive to put the reader at the centre of the experience, teasing the first sentence out in the second person before smoothly switching to third-person to introduce his protagonist, Leonard Mead. It’s a subtle move, and all the more effective for it. The reader becomes Mr. Leonard Mead as he walks the silent city streets.

Leonard is a full-blooded human being, sensing and perceiving the world around him, in contrast with the silent streets and the passive, controlled, population trapped inside, watching their screens. In a world like this, you have to tread quietly: 

“For long ago he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.” ‘Hello, in there,’ he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. ‘What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?’“

The parallels we can draw between the story and our current circumstances — the 4th industrial revolution and the digital transformation of our lives — is clear. But it’s the theme of inner freedom and creativity as a flame of hope, and as way to live, that interested me when I first read the story in Kathmandu. Because the lessons can be applied no matter your circumstances: trapped in your city apartment or loveless in the Himalayas. Leonard reaches an intersection, which he reimagines as a vast dry riverbed, when out of sheer bad luck he crosses paths with the only patrol car in the now-crimeless city. He seems almost stunned by this coincidence, as if his own inner freedom had blinded him to the threat of ever being caught or punished. 

Mead is questioned and answers truthfully but slightly casually, revealing himself as someone with creative tendencies, a thinker, an imaginer , when he states his profession, which does not go down well:

“’Your name?’ said the police car in a metallic whisper. He couldn’t see the men in it for the bright light in his eyes. ‘Leonard Mead,’ he said. ‘Speak up!’ ‘Leonard Mead!’ Business or profession?’ ‘I guess you’d call me a writer.’ No profession,’ said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest. This is a world that regards everything as a resource, a place where art has no place, and return-on-investment is the bottom line, policed by algorithms and smart technology. A world that has bought into the ideology so completely that a man like Leonard Mead is an outlaw.  And yet, he has been able to survive in that world happy and undetected for years.

The three moments that hit me hardest occur near the end of the story. 

“’What are you doing out?’ ‘Walking,’ said Leonard Mead. ‘Walking!’ ‘Just walking,’ he said simply, but his face felt cold. ‘Walking, just walking, walking?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Walking where? For what?’ ‘Walking for air. Walking to see.’ 

That such things might have to be explained is terrifying.

And then: ‘Are you married, Mr. Mead?’ ‘No.’ ‘Not married,’ said the police voice behind the fiery beam. The moon was high and clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent. ‘Nobody wanted me,’ said Leonard Mead with a smile. ‘Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to!’“

Mead’s simple “nobody wanted me”, said with a smile, is heartbreaking. 

Nobody wanted him because he lives outside of society and sees what others cannot or do not want to see. But it’s a mistake to pity Leonard because the secret is that he’s happy to be alone — to fully exercise and enjoy his senses and imagination, and to go where he sees fit with no interruption. “The Pedestrian” reminds us there are things of great importance other than being loved or belonging. Many of them lie in our landscapes, and most within our inner landscapes.

The moment that hits me the hardest of all happens moments later. Ordered into the unmanned patrol car, he’s taken away to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies and recognizes his own home along the way: 

“They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness. ‘That’s my house,’ said Leonard Mead. No one answered him.”

This isn’t just a story of the fight for self, but a story of the value of that fight. It’s about ourselves and our senses, and it’s a shout out to anyone who feels alone and is struggling to find value in that, too. 

“The Pedestrian” has helped me many times since I first read it. It showed me a way of being and, in Leonard Mead, introduced me to a character who has stuck around in my life, making appearances whenever he needs to.

It’s strange but I almost don’t notice that Leonard Mead gets taken away in the end. It’s my blind spot in the story and I’m happy to stick with that.

To paraphrase the cowboy from The Big Lebowski : ‘Leonard Mead abides. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there, Leonard Mead, takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.’ And besides, he left his lights blazing, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness , and because the story ends, no one can ever switch them off.

— Chris Crawford

Chris Crawford is a founding editor at B O D Y .

© 2024 | B O D Y | bodyliterature.com

The Pedestrian

28 pages • 56 minutes read

The Pedestrian: A Fantasy in One Act

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

What is ironic about the role of law enforcement in this story, and why? Support your ideas with evidence from the text.

How do the two distinct moods of the story contribute to the author’s purpose? Identify the moods and how the author creates them. Then use evidence from the text to support your thesis about the author’s purpose.

Consider the historical context of the story. Why might Bradbury have chosen to portray the government, technology, and conformity together in a negative light?

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By Ray Bradbury

A Graveyard for Lunatics

Ray Bradbury

All Summer In A Day

A Sound Of Thunder

Dandelion Wine

Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed

Death is a Lonely Business

Fahrenheit 451

Marionettes, Inc.

Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Illustrated Man

The Martian Chronicles

The Other Foot

There Will Come Soft Rains

The Toynbee Convector

The Pedestrian

Ray bradbury, everything you need for every book you read..

Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Pedestrian” narrates the life of Leonard Mead , a resident of an unnamed city in the year 2053. For 10 years, Mead has walked the city streets alone, night after night, past homes of other citizens who sit transfixed by their televisions. He is ultimately arrested merely for walking freely on the street, an absurd event that reveals Bradbury’s grim view of 21st century: it’s a dystopian world where technology has deadened the populace and enabled state power to enforce conformity. Bradbury’s short stories and novels frequently explore the social costs of technological progress. Through imagery of death, descriptions of humans in cars as insects, and Mead’s interaction with the robotic police car , “The Pedestrian” expresses the pessimistic view that the technological advances of the 1950s (like televisions, automobiles, and computers) will ultimately rob people of their essential humanity and give undue power to machines. 

As Leonard Mead walks through the city, the streets, homes, and people are all described with imagery of death. Through this use of morbid language, Bradbury predicts that one of the most exciting technological advances of his time, the television, will eventually deaden its viewers. Walking through the “silent and long and empty” streets is like “walking through a graveyard.” This establishes the landscape as one that has been robbed of all vitality by the television, which everyone is inside watching. The homes Mead passes are described as housing the dead: “tombs, ill-lit by television light.” The houses, too, are devoid of any signs of liveliness, and people’s pacification in front of their televisions inside these deathly structures indicates that modern technology is the cause. Passing one “tomb-like building,” Mead sees “gray phantoms” through open windows, and he hears “whisperings and murmurs” from the people within. The people inside watching their televisions are motionless and emotionless, metaphorically dead: “the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.” The people of 2053 are clearly more concerned with what is happening in the fictional, sensationalized realm of television than they are with their own physical surroundings—though they are superficially “touched” by what they watch, it has no meaningful, tangible impact upon them. Mead, then, is established as the last living soul in a world of empty, lifeless “phantoms” who are wholly consumed by technology.

In comparing the masses to the dead, Bradbury portrays people as having lost their uniquely human life force and spirit. He takes this notion a step further by critiquing the automobile’s effects on humans, likening people in cars to mindless, swarming insects rather than complex, sentient beings. Bradbury describes the city in the daytime as “a great insect rustling and a ceaseless jockeying for position as the scarab-beetles, a faint incense puttering from their exhausts, skimmed homeward to the far direction.” The people driving are not mentioned. Instead, the city of automobiles resembles a swarm of insects scurrying around. While walking puts Mead in direct, reverent contact with the beauty of his natural surroundings, those around him have become wholly disconnected from nature via their televisions and cars.

Even Mead, the sole pedestrian remaining in his city, is not immune to the dehumanizing effects of the automobile. As soon as he comes in contact with the police car, he is also likened to a helpless insect, “[standing] entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it.” Here, Mead’s personality and individuality seem to disappear the moment he is forced to interact with the cold, robotic authority of the police car. Interrogated by the voice from the police car, Mead is further described as being like a bug on display: “The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.” This image of Mead as an insect killed to be studied foreshadows the story’s ending, when he loses his freedom and is taken away to a psychiatric institution, and thereby wholly stripped of his humanity and agency as an individual.

While technology is clearly dehumanizing people, Bradbury also depicts machines as becoming more human. The police car that accosts Mead in the street is made of the materials of technology but has human qualities, such as its “metallic,” “phonographic” voice that questions Mead. The voice from the car strips Mead of his individuality, defining him as deviant by the standards of this society, despite being subhuman itself. Mead is instructed to get in the back seat of the car, which is like “a little black jail cell with bars.” The “clean and hard and metallic” smells of the police car further reinforce its power to strip Mead of his humanity, as this unpleasant artificial environment starkly contrasts with the delightful, entrancing smells of the outdoors that he enjoyed on his walk earlier in the story. As Mead gets in the car, he sees that there is no one driving it. He asks the car where he is going, and it is revealed that the car is robotic and run by a remote computer: “The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes.” It is this robotic, inhuman entity that ultimately decides Mead’s fate and sentences him to be locked in a psychiatric institution and stripped of his dignity and freedom. Modern innovations like televisions, automobiles, and computers are manmade innovations, and Bradbury warns against the dangers of relying on these machines to the point that they control humans, rather than the other way around.

When “The Pedestrian” was published in 1951, sales of televisions were booming, car culture was taking over American cities, and computer technology was on the rise. Through his portrayal of a listless, soulless population contrasted with the sentient, authoritarian technology in the story, Bradbury predicted that within the next century, these technological developments would dehumanize and disempower the populace, turning neighborhoods into graveyards, homes into tombs, and people into phantoms and mindless insects. Moreover, he predicted that technology would be harnessed to enforce obedience to the social status quo and punish those, like Leonard Mead, who didn’t conform.

Technology and Dehumanization ThemeTracker

Technology and Dehumanization Quotes in The Pedestrian

[O]n 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. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls… or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomb-like building was still open.

“What's up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?...What is it now?” he asked the houses… “Eight-thirty P.M.? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?”

“What are you doing out?”

“Walking,” said Leonard Mead. “Walking!”

“Just walking,” he said simply, but his face felt cold.

“Walking, just walking, walking?” “Yes, sir.”

“Walking where? For what?”

“Walking for air. Walking to see.”

“Your address!”

“Where are you taking me?”

The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes. “To the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.”

• Solar Eclipse 2024

What the World Has Learned From Past Eclipses

C louds scudded over the small volcanic island of Principe, off the western coast of Africa, on the afternoon of May 29, 1919. Arthur Eddington, director of the Cambridge Observatory in the U.K., waited for the Sun to emerge. The remains of a morning thunderstorm could ruin everything.

The island was about to experience the rare and overwhelming sight of a total solar eclipse. For six minutes, the longest eclipse since 1416, the Moon would completely block the face of the Sun, pulling a curtain of darkness over a thin stripe of Earth. Eddington traveled into the eclipse path to try and prove one of the most consequential ideas of his age: Albert Einstein’s new theory of general relativity.

Eddington, a physicist, was one of the few people at the time who understood the theory, which Einstein proposed in 1915. But many other scientists were stymied by the bizarre idea that gravity is not a mutual attraction, but a warping of spacetime. Light itself would be subject to this warping, too. So an eclipse would be the best way to prove whether the theory was true, because with the Sun’s light blocked by the Moon, astronomers would be able to see whether the Sun’s gravity bent the light of distant stars behind it.

Two teams of astronomers boarded ships steaming from Liverpool, England, in March 1919 to watch the eclipse and take the measure of the stars. Eddington and his team went to Principe, and another team led by Frank Dyson of the Greenwich Observatory went to Sobral, Brazil.

Totality, the complete obscuration of the Sun, would be at 2:13 local time in Principe. Moments before the Moon slid in front of the Sun, the clouds finally began breaking up. For a moment, it was totally clear. Eddington and his group hastily captured images of a star cluster found near the Sun that day, called the Hyades, found in the constellation of Taurus. The astronomers were using the best astronomical technology of the time, photographic plates, which are large exposures taken on glass instead of film. Stars appeared on seven of the plates, and solar “prominences,” filaments of gas streaming from the Sun, appeared on others.

Eddington wanted to stay in Principe to measure the Hyades when there was no eclipse, but a ship workers’ strike made him leave early. Later, Eddington and Dyson both compared the glass plates taken during the eclipse to other glass plates captured of the Hyades in a different part of the sky, when there was no eclipse. On the images from Eddington’s and Dyson’s expeditions, the stars were not aligned. The 40-year-old Einstein was right.

“Lights All Askew In the Heavens,” the New York Times proclaimed when the scientific papers were published. The eclipse was the key to the discovery—as so many solar eclipses before and since have illuminated new findings about our universe.

To understand why Eddington and Dyson traveled such distances to watch the eclipse, we need to talk about gravity.

Since at least the days of Isaac Newton, who wrote in 1687, scientists thought gravity was a simple force of mutual attraction. Newton proposed that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe, and that the strength of this attraction is related to the size of the objects and the distances among them. This is mostly true, actually, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

On much larger scales, like among black holes or galaxy clusters, Newtonian gravity falls short. It also can’t accurately account for the movement of large objects that are close together, such as how the orbit of Mercury is affected by its proximity the Sun.

Albert Einstein’s most consequential breakthrough solved these problems. General relativity holds that gravity is not really an invisible force of mutual attraction, but a distortion. Rather than some kind of mutual tug-of-war, large objects like the Sun and other stars respond relative to each other because the space they are in has been altered. Their mass is so great that they bend the fabric of space and time around themselves.

Read More: 10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

This was a weird concept, and many scientists thought Einstein’s ideas and equations were ridiculous. But others thought it sounded reasonable. Einstein and others knew that if the theory was correct, and the fabric of reality is bending around large objects, then light itself would have to follow that bend. The light of a star in the great distance, for instance, would seem to curve around a large object in front of it, nearer to us—like our Sun. But normally, it’s impossible to study stars behind the Sun to measure this effect. Enter an eclipse.

Einstein’s theory gives an equation for how much the Sun’s gravity would displace the images of background stars. Newton’s theory predicts only half that amount of displacement.

Eddington and Dyson measured the Hyades cluster because it contains many stars; the more stars to distort, the better the comparison. Both teams of scientists encountered strange political and natural obstacles in making the discovery, which are chronicled beautifully in the book No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity , by the physicist Daniel Kennefick. But the confirmation of Einstein’s ideas was worth it. Eddington said as much in a letter to his mother: “The one good plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein,” he wrote , “and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.”

The Eddington-Dyson experiments were hardly the first time scientists used eclipses to make profound new discoveries. The idea dates to the beginnings of human civilization.

Careful records of lunar and solar eclipses are one of the greatest legacies of ancient Babylon. Astronomers—or astrologers, really, but the goal was the same—were able to predict both lunar and solar eclipses with impressive accuracy. They worked out what we now call the Saros Cycle, a repeating period of 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours in which eclipses appear to repeat. One Saros cycle is equal to 223 synodic months, which is the time it takes the Moon to return to the same phase as seen from Earth. They also figured out, though may not have understood it completely, the geometry that enables eclipses to happen.

The path we trace around the Sun is called the ecliptic. Our planet’s axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane, which is why we have seasons, and why the other celestial bodies seem to cross the same general path in our sky.

As the Moon goes around Earth, it, too, crosses the plane of the ecliptic twice in a year. The ascending node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic. The descending node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic. When the Moon crosses a node, a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good at predicting when eclipses would occur.

Two and a half millennia later, in 2016, astronomers used these same ancient records to measure the change in the rate at which Earth’s rotation is slowing—which is to say, the amount by which are days are lengthening, over thousands of years.

By the middle of the 19 th century, scientific discoveries came at a frenetic pace, and eclipses powered many of them. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the colors of sunlight during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of an unknown element, indicating a new discovery: Helium, named for the Greek god of the Sun. In another eclipse in 1869, astronomers found convincing evidence of another new element, which they nicknamed coronium—before learning a few decades later that it was not a new element, but highly ionized iron, indicating that the Sun’s atmosphere is exceptionally, bizarrely hot. This oddity led to the prediction, in the 1950s, of a continual outflow that we now call the solar wind.

And during solar eclipses between 1878 and 1908, astronomers searched in vain for a proposed extra planet within the orbit of Mercury. Provisionally named Vulcan, this planet was thought to exist because Newtonian gravity could not fully describe Mercury’s strange orbit. The matter of the innermost planet’s path was settled, finally, in 1915, when Einstein used general relativity equations to explain it.

Many eclipse expeditions were intended to learn something new, or to prove an idea right—or wrong. But many of these discoveries have major practical effects on us. Understanding the Sun, and why its atmosphere gets so hot, can help us predict solar outbursts that could disrupt the power grid and communications satellites. Understanding gravity, at all scales, allows us to know and to navigate the cosmos.

GPS satellites, for instance, provide accurate measurements down to inches on Earth. Relativity equations account for the effects of the Earth’s gravity and the distances between the satellites and their receivers on the ground. Special relativity holds that the clocks on satellites, which experience weaker gravity, seem to run slower than clocks under the stronger force of gravity on Earth. From the point of view of the satellite, Earth clocks seem to run faster. We can use different satellites in different positions, and different ground stations, to accurately triangulate our positions on Earth down to inches. Without those calculations, GPS satellites would be far less precise.

This year, scientists fanned out across North America and in the skies above it will continue the legacy of eclipse science. Scientists from NASA and several universities and other research institutions will study Earth’s atmosphere; the Sun’s atmosphere; the Sun’s magnetic fields; and the Sun’s atmospheric outbursts, called coronal mass ejections.

When you look up at the Sun and Moon on the eclipse , the Moon’s day — or just observe its shadow darkening the ground beneath the clouds, which seems more likely — think about all the discoveries still yet waiting to happen, just behind the shadow of the Moon.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
• Stop Looking for Your Forever Home
• Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
• Hormonal Birth Control Doesn’t Deserve Its Bad Reputation
• The Sympathizer Counters 50 Years of Hollywood Vietnam War Narratives
• Essay: The Relentless Cost of Chronic Diseases
• The Best TV Shows to Watch on Peacock
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

You May Also Like

Advertisement

Supported by

How Ozempic Turned a 1970s Hit Into an Inescapable Jingle

The diabetes drug has become a phenomenon, and “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic!” — a takeoff of the Pilot song “Magic” — has played a big part in its story.

• Share full article

By Craig Marks

In February 2023, David Paton, guitar case in hand, strode across the most famous pedestrian walkway in rock history and into London’s Abbey Road Studios.

Paton was no stranger to the rooms where the Beatles changed the course of popular music: His 1970s pop-rock band Pilot recorded two albums there. In his second life, as an in-demand studio and touring musician for the likes of Kate Bush and Elton John, he clocked numerous sessions with the prog-rock outfit the Alan Parsons Project, whose namesake produced Pilot’s signature hit, “Magic.” He even spent some time there with his boyhood hero, Paul McCartney, singing backup vocals on Wings’ “Mull of Kintyre.”

Paton had come to London to record a new version of “Magic.” “It was a great thrill to be back at Abbey Road, singing my song,” he said in a recent video interview from his home studio in Edinburgh, an array of guitars displayed behind him. The track’s stair-step chorus — “Oh, oh, oh /it’s MAAA-gic” — could test Paton’s vocal range even back in 1974, and again a year later, when the song became a worldwide hit, peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“It’s just about the enjoyment of life,” he said. “About waking up in the morning, you know? I was 22 when I wrote it.” Now he was 73, and unsure if he could still reach those high notes. But Paton took his place in front of the Abbey Road microphone and confidently sang that indelible hook, only with the word “magic” swapped out for something less ephemeral and more pharmaceutical: “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic.”

As television viewers are all too aware, that altered chorus from “Magic” serves as the advertising jingle for the Type 2 diabetes medication Ozempic . Since the product arrived in 2018, the bowdlerized version of “Magic” — first rerecorded by work-for-hire musicians, and then re-rerecorded by Paton at Abbey Road — has taken its place alongside such classics of the form as Subway’s “Five Dollar Foot Long” and McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” as marvels of marketing ingenuity.

“It’s an earworm all right,” said David Allan, a professor of marketing at Saint Joseph’s University and the author of “This Note’s for You,” a book about music and advertising. “You can’t get it out of your head.”

Those three seconds of AM-radio bliss — “It’s just a first, a third and a fifth note,” Paton modestly explained — have played a pivotal role in the Ozempic story. Its parent company, Novo Nordisk , has now become Europe’s most valuable public company, with a market cap of nearly $570 billion.

Ozempic, of course, has become much more than a diabetes drug: Its “off label” use to treat obesity has sparked a “weight-loss revolution,” as Oprah Winfrey called it in her March TV special dedicated to an emerging group of diabetes and anti-obesity medications . Buttressed by an ad spend of $120 million over just the first seven months of 2023, according to MediaRadar, Ozempic’s Q rating is such that the brand now stands in for an entire category of product, as Viagra does for erectile dysfunction drugs. On the March 30 episode of “Saturday Night Live,” the comedian Ramy Youssef appeared in a spoof commercial for “Ozempic for Ramadan” that featured the familiar “Oh, oh, oh” of “Magic.”

This Ozempic boom is due in no small part to the jingle, which helped turn a byzantine mash-up of syllables into a brand patients would request from doctors by name. Jeremy Shepler, who headed the Ozempic launch in the United States for Novo Nordisk, had previously enjoyed success deploying music in a commercial for a new-to-market nasal spray, and knew he wanted to find a song that worked both mnemonically and emotionally.

“The first song I came up with was by New Kids on the Block, the one that goes ‘Oh oh oh oh oh’,” he sang, referring to “You Got It (The Right Stuff).” “But New Kids was a bit too young,” he said. “The average age of our patient was between 50 and 55. Then it came to me: ‘Oh, oh, oh, it’s magic.’”

That snippet of a chorus not only seared the “O” in Ozempic into consumers’ temporal lobes, but its cheerfulness sold the promise of the drug: to “help people get back to a level of health when their life was bright and their future was optimistic,” said Jeff Rothstein, chief executive of CultHealth, the ad agency for Ozempic. Also, baby boomers exposed to the jingle would subconsciously hear the missing word “magic,” which, said Shepler, helped reinforce the drug’s transformative quality.

Novo licensed the song from Sony Music Publishing, and Rothstein hired a music production house to record the brand-specific version of “Magic.” When they tested a rough version of the commercial, “It was the highest scoring ad we’d ever seen,” Shepler said.

As the spot first began airing in 2018 (direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is allowed only in the United States and New Zealand), Paton wasn’t even aware that “Magic” had been licensed for the advert. “I learned about it through Facebook,” he said. “Fans would write me, ‘I’m hearing “Magic” every 20 minutes on my TV’.”

Paton and Billy Lyall, his Pilot bandmate who died in 1989 at age 36, share a co-writing credit on “Magic,” and split the revenue generated by the composition with Sony Publishing. (Songs generate multiple income streams, some based on the performance or master recording, some based on the songwriting. In this case, since the original recording of “Magic” was not used by Novo Nordisk, Pilot’s record label, Warner Music Group, was not involved.)

As is common practice in the music industry, Sony was not obligated to receive permission from the songwriters to license the song. Not that Paton minded: Three music-industry executives, asked separately to assess the value of the Ozempic deal, said it was most likely worth seven figures to Paton. (Paton, Sony Music Publishing and Novo Nordisk all declined to discuss financial terms of the deal.)

The Ozempic commercial “is another example of why classic, iconic music catalogs are great investments,” said Jon Singer, chairman of Spirit Music Group, a music publishing company with a repertoire that includes songs by the Who, Chicago, Toto and T. Rex.

“Music as an asset can have multiple lives,” added Billy Mann, a Grammy-nominated songwriter and longtime publishing executive. “There’s a ‘comfort food’ feeling of nostalgia that hit songs can trigger. They’re time machines.”

In the Spotify era, older songs have spiked in value, as consumers repeatedly press play on the songs of their youth. For artists, those fractions of a penny eventually add up, and that has helped create a gold rush for veteran acts looking to sell their music catalogs. “There’s a finite number of songs that have proven to be iconic for 40 or 50 years,” said Bill Werde, the director of the Bandier music business program at Syracuse University and the author of the industry newsletter “Full Rate No Cap.” “Those songs have special value on the marketplace.”

Licensing a song for a commercial may be seen by some as antithetical to the countercultural spirit of rock ’n’ roll. “There have always been protectors of the flame who, when certain songs get used in certain moments, aggressively clutch their pearls,” Werde said. “But there’s very little evidence that this has ever harmed any artist.” He pointed to the Beatles licensing their utopian “All You Need Is Love” to Luvs diapers in 2007 as perhaps the most egregious example of an advertiser co-opting a song’s original meaning. “But no one really cared. It was Ob-la-di. Life goes on.”

Simon Allaway, 52, an Ozempic user and Chicago-based computer programmer and musician, loves the “Magic” spot. “I can’t help but sing along to it,” he said. “It’s a perfect fit with the product.” Another user wrote in a message-board post that whenever she injects herself, her father sings “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic.”

“Magic” has been leased plenty of times before, for a Coca-Cola commercial — “I actually sang ‘Coke, Coke, Coke, it’s Magic’ back in the ’70s,” Paton recalled — for the 2005 Disney film “Herbie: Fully Loaded” and as the musical bed for Flo Rida’s 2009 single, also called “Magic,” to name a few. “People always want to use the song in some way or the other,” Paton said.

Asked if he was bothered by his song’s association with what turned out to be a lightning-rod product, he smiled and shook his head. “I was delighted! I’m a songwriter. I want to sell my music. A lot of people don’t know the name Pilot, but they know the Ozempic song.”

For musicians, the success of the Ozempic commercial could be a harbinger of big checks to come. Pharmaceutical companies have seemingly unlimited budgets to promote their wares: according to the media analytics firm Guideline, pharma surpassed tech and auto in 2023 to become the second largest industry for ad spending, behind only consumer packaged goods.

Already, Lady Gaga is a spokesperson for Pfizer’s migraine medication Nurtec ODT; Cyndi Lauper lends her distinct Brooklyn accent to a commercial for Cosentyx, which treats plaque psoriasis; John Legend and Charlie Puth pitch Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and boosters. The Jackson 5’s “ABC” propels ads for Trelegy (used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), while commercials for the heart drug Entresto are soundtracked by Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On.”

But those spots haven’t embedded themselves into pop culture the way “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic” has.

“In contemporary advertising, campaigns tend to have pretty short shelf lives,” CultHealth’s Rothstein said. “Two, three years, tops. Yet ‘Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic’ continues to endure. You can do all the market research in the world, and never end up with something like this.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the year that “Magic” became a hit. While the song was released in 1974, it reached the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975, not 1974. The error was repeated in the headline.

How we handle corrections

A Close Look at Weight-Loss Drugs

The Era of ‘Brozempic’: Some telehealth start-ups are playing up masculine stereotypes to market GLP-1s  — the revolutionary class of drugs like Ozempic — which have been more widely associated with women.

Taking on Weight Stigma: Oprah Winfrey, a prominent figure in the conversation about dieting and weight bias, tackled the rise of weight loss drugs in a new prime-time special . In December, she shared that she was taking a medication to manage her weight.

Beyond Weight Loss: Wegovy is now approved for a new use: reducing the risk of heart attacks , strokes and cardiovascular-related death in adults who have heart disease and are overweight

Pregnancy: Doctors say they are seeing more women try weight-loss medications in the hopes of having a healthy pregnancy. But little is known about the impact of those drugs on a fetus .

Muscle Loss: As drugs like Ozempic become increasingly popular for weight loss, more doctors and patients are looking for ways to counteract the muscle loss that can happen on these medications. Companies are racing to meet that demand .