to be a deserted cityscape (it appears deserted due to the fact that the rest of the citizenry is staying inside within their homes). In this sense, Leonard Mead himself can be understood as a symbol of sorts. Much likeFahrenheit 451, "The Pedestrian" voices a criticism against a popular culture that, in Bradbury's view, panders to the lowest common denominator (one which he primarily associates with television). With this in mind, the physical presence of Leonard Mead, the writer who no longer writes, wandering the empty streets, can be seen as a symbol representing the more intellectual and cultured way of life that (for Bradbury) this popular culture threatens to endanger and supplant.

In addition, there is the physical geography of the city itself, with its many unlit houses (whose inhabitants remain inside). Note the degree to which Bradbury links this imagery with imagery surrounding death, as if to say that this TV culture is itself dead and inert (just as the houses are), and yet, as the story ends, we see one exception to this mass of unlit houses: the brightly lit house of Mead himself. In this sense, the story's physical geography can be understood as symbolic, with Mead's house reflecting Mead's own nonconformist status within this dead and inert culture, while the mass of unlit houses symbolizes that culture he defies.