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Similes
Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—“Regressive” Leonard:
In an example of situational irony, an automated police car arrests Mead and takes him to a psychiatric facility for the completely normal act of walking through his own neighborhood at night. The irony of this moment comes across in the following passage, after Mead asks the police car where it is taking him:
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."
As the car states, it is taking Mead to a psychiatric facility for people with “regressive tendencies.” This is ironic because it is, in fact, the police car—and the authoritarian government that controls it—that could be categorized as “regressive” for their dehumanizing and forceful ways. In other words, it is not Mead who is backward, but the society in which he lives, given the way that he is criminalized (and, presumably, incarcerated) for normal human behavior like wanting to take an evening stroll.
Situational irony like this is one of the many ways that Bradbury highlights the contradictions and absurdities of this speculative world, as well as technologically advanced and unjust societies as a whole.
Related Themes:
