A Sound Of Thunder Short Story Analysis

Think about a piece of gum. Let’s say that you’re done chewing it, so you spit it out on the ground. It’s nothing. Then think about a billion people that do the same thing. Overtime, all those wads of gum suddenly get tossed out and end up in the ocean, and kill about every marine animal you can think of. All of a sudden, you think, and you realize that the one tossed away piece of gum is a big deal, and that it had a large impact on the world. In the short story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, Eckels, a hunter, wants to go hunting, except in the past. He goes to Time Safari, Inc., a time travel company, and requests to hunt a dinosaur. He then goes to the past, accompanied by four hunters and confronts the dinosaur. After Eckels chickens out and a long struggle, the dinosaur is defeated. After they return to the present world, Eckels finds out he has killed a butterfly. He asks the official what happened and he then realizes that he has altered the course of history forever. The theme of “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury is that if you’re not careful, small decisions can have very unpredictable outcomes. This can be proven by when Eckels went off of the Path, when Travis explains the rules of the Hunt, and when they reach present time and realize the drastic changes.

A Sound of Thunder is a short story written by Ray Bradbury which belongs to the genre of science fiction. The story set in A.D.2055 when time travel is possible, this is the story of a travel agency, Time Safari Inc., that arrangeed hunting trips back in time to hunt dinosaurs. It is also a futuristic story about how changing a small thing can result in a huge change somewhere down the timeline. In this case, a nervous hunter, Eckels, stepped off the trail, and stepped on a butterfly. The historical repercussions of the death of a single butterfly, compounded by millions of years of effects.

In the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, foreshadowing is used multiple times to hint at events to come in the future. The story follows Eckels, who paid to go on a safari to the past to kill the legendary Tyrannosaurus Rex. On many different occasions characters hinted at important events that would take place. These foreshadowing lines include Travis, the safari guide, repeatedly telling the hunters to stay on the path, the man behind the desk telling Eckels that disobeying rules would result in a large fine or government action when he returns, and the conversation about the results of the presidential election.

“A Sound of Thunder” is a short story in which, the author, Ray Bradbury presents a tale which takes place between the 2050’s and the 2060’s. In this futuristic setting, they have a business that goes hunting into the past using a time machine. This business is called Time Safari, Inc. The story introduces the main character, Mr. Eckels, and another important character, Travis. Travis leads three hunters, including Mr. Eckels, to the past when dinosaurs roamed the earth. They encounter the massive Tyrannosaurus rex, which scares Mr. Eckels enough to make him fall off of the path laid for them to walk on, breaking the most important rule they were given. When they get back to the present day something had changed. Travis looks at Eckel’s boot and sees that he killed a butterfly by stepping off of the path. Mr. Eckels closed his eyes and pleaded, but he heard Travis pull out his gun and click the trigger back and then there was the sound of thunder. There are many allusions in this magnificent short story such as when he references that Christ isn't born yet, or that Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler don’t exist yet.

Ever wonder what’s going to happen next in a story? Suspense is that literary element and it’s used in almost all cases of writing. Some authors use a lot of it to build up their stories, others, not so much. Ray Bradbury, an American author and screenwriter was one of those authors who used suspense to build up the tension and develop the plot of his stories. From beginning to end, genre to genre, suspense can be found all over his work. “A Sound of Thunder”, “The Veldt”, and “The Pedestrian” are just three examples of Bradbury’s work where he uses suspense all over the text to keep the reader on the edge of their seat and wondering what’s going to happen next.

Ray Bradbury is an author used to writing against the norm. Many of his literary works are written in such a way to make the reader think, such as his most famous work Fahrenheit 451, which was a book whose imagery was created entirely by the reader’s perspective. Bradbury (1994) switches up the literary device with ‘A Sound of Thunder’. A Sound of Thunder focuses on three men on a hunting expedition through a time machine, hoping to hunt a T-Rex and proclaim themselves true big game hunters of time. The Expedition goes awry, and one man, Eckels, panics and runs back to the time machine. In the process of his flight, he tramples a butterfly. The other men shoot and kill the dinosaur, and Eckels is sent back to retrieve the bullets from its corpse. The hunting guide learns of Eckels’ misstep, and upon returning to the present, they realize Eckels changed it all for the worse. The expedition ends in a sound of thunder, the fate of Eckels unknown, but assumed. Bradbury uses imagery and diction masterfully in this short story, but a very large focus throughout the story is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing, or the alluding to of events that will eventually take place in the story, remains a centerpiece in Bradbury’s work. How does Bradbury use foreshadowing to bring about a perspective change in the reader?

The following assignment was completed based off of the short story A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury.

There is themes which is the central idea of a story and then there is universal themes. A universal theme is an idea primarily about an aspect of human life that umbrellas several other stories. Universal themes can be identified through literary devices such as symbolism, metaphors, foreshadowing, and . The stories that will be focused on to recognize universal themes are “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury and “The Interlopers” by Saki. “A Sound of Thunder” is a science fiction short story where a man with the name of Eckels hires a time travel company so he can go back and kill dinosaurs. “The Interlopers” is a suspenseful short story that mainly centers on the plot in which two men who call themselves Georg and Ulrich are destined to kill each other since their past generations hated each other. Both stories main themes are completely different however, they both show multiple universal themes. The universal themes in “The Interlopers” and “A Sound of Thunder” represented by literary devices are all events and actions are important and everyone has limits.

Throughout this course so far we have read several short stories, many of which I have enjoyed. Each story we have read is different in their own ways, some have figurative language while others have life lessons throughout the story. There are a couple of short stories that I would recommend to friends, although one particularly stands out. The one story that I would recommend to a friend to read would be "A Sound Of Thunder" due to it teaching a valuable life lesson while being enjoyable and having a surprise ending.

In the short story “A Sound of Thunder,” Ray Bradbury utilizes imagery to paint a picture in the reader's head of the setting and how the characters conquer problems along the way, and furthermore uses this literary device to provide the theme of the story; little things can make a big difference, and pay attention to detail. This happens when Travis, the tour guide of the prehistoric hunt, and Eckels, the customer, are hunting dinosaurs together and first catch sight of the T-Rex. The men are astonished at what they see, “It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker’s claws close to its oily reptilian chest. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick

In the short story “Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, Bradbury tries to convey an important message. He conveys this message by using the character Eckels go back in time to hunt a dinosaur. When Eckels goes back in time, he steps off the track and crushed a butterfly. This action triggered the butterfly-effect which changed present events because of his actions when he went back in time. His careless behavior changed many events that happened in the present year.

King George III looked absolutely stupefied. The colonists should love their mother country, not revolt against it! Those settlers found that they felt content without Britain by their side, a concept which not a single soul predicted earlier. King George III gained an important life lesson that is present in many short stories today. In “A Sound of Thunder,” Eckels time-travels to the age of dinosaurs, and the tour guide stresses exceedingly strict rules about not damaging history. Nevertheless, Eckels accidentally does so and must face the consequences. “The Moustache,” another short story, illustrates the account of a boy named Mike, who finds out his memory-losing grandmother has mistaken him for her late husband. He does not know whether

In the A Sound of Thunder Eckel and a group go back in time to kill a real, living, dinosaur. The only risk about going back in time is if you mess up one little thing it could change the whole world. When it is time to kill the dinosaur Echel gets scared and runs back to the time machine, when he was running there he stepped off the path and stepped on a butterfly and changed everything. Within the story foreshadowing can be found when the book repeats itself about Keith, stepping off the path and someone getting killed.

deal with racism is to just accept it. This is shown when she tries to

During the course of Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry by Mildred Taylor, Cassie gains and loses innocence. Cassie, the protagonist of the story, lives in 1933 Mississippi, where quantities of racism happen daily. But however, Cassie doesn’t have a clear understanding of why the white people are doing bad things to her. In Chapter 5, however, Cassie has to learn right from wrong because society and the social structure of 1933 Mississippi has her near the bottom, and she doesn’t know how to deal with the situations in chapter 5.