A Sound Of Thunder Short Story

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 theme is the author’s underlying message that is expressed in more one word. Some themes can be very similar to each other, an example of this is the two documents I will comparing in this analysis essay; The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and On the sidewalk Bleeding by Evan Hunter. These two stories share similar themes, Don’t judge someone by what they look like, get to know them before you determine their fate. However the authors portray this theme in a different way. One story depicts a young boy who goes through troublesome events in his life before he realizes the moral of his life.

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.

“We’re here to give you the severest thrill a real hunter ever asked for. Travelling you back sixty million years to bag the biggest game in all of Time”(Bradbury 224). The thought of travelling back in time just to shoot a prehistoric beast of the Past is just that; a thought. People now can’t even imagine what it would be like to look a ferocious dinosaur in the eyes, but it may happen one day in the Future. Ray Bradbury paints this picture for us in his incredible story about this unbelievable mystery with figurative language and personification. “A Sound of Thunder” follows a big game hunter, Mr. Eckels, through a Time Safari of the Future and how he completely changes the world around him by disregarding the dangers of Time Travel,

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?

Imagine a world with a public time machine. No license, no objections. But you will have to know what you going into because whatever you do will have an effect in the world. In the story, The Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury, Eckels, the main character, experienced this message in a very violent way. Although Eckels is brave, curious and courageous beyond measure, he is far from admirable because his selfish and impulsive behaviors made him unaware of his surroundings in ways that drastically harm others and the world around him. Eckels is not a good character in this story because of his bad acts. Ray Bradbury is basically expressing a good idea in a more elaborated version of it. He is saying that all actions have consequences. Eckels

Due to this, the family steals food in order to cure their hunger. This shows the theme beacuse it shows that in times of need, sometimes people have to do what is best for themselves instead of thinking about others. The Street also shows the same theme by using the wind as an annoyance to the people in the street, an event in the excerpt. “It wrapped newspaper around their feet entangling them until the people cursed deep in their throats, stamped their feet, and kicked off the paper.” (Petry 2). Due to the wind, the people are inferior and are becoming annoyed with everything that is being thrown at them. This annoyance causes the people the make violent remarks. Because of the wind, the people were forced to do these things even if some of them didn’t want to. Overall, both McCourt and Petry used events to help tell the theme.

Whatever you do will have an effect in the world. In the story, The Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury, Eckels, the main character, experienced this message in a very violent way. Although Eckels was brave, curious and courageous beyond measure, he is far from admirable because his selfish and impulsive behaviors made him unaware of his surroundings in ways that drastically harm others and the world around him. Eckels is not a good character in this story because of his bad acts. Ray Bradbury is basically expressing a good idea in a more elaborated version of it. He is saying that all actions have consequences. Eckels showed that by not thinking before acting and not trusting his power or instincts.

The imagery that Bradbury uses in the story sets a suspenseful feeling. In the story, Travis and the gang approach the T-Rex, at first little to no detail is said about the T-Rex until Bradbury’s narrative takes over. The given example:

Symbolism is integrated into “A Sound of Thunder” to develop the author’s argument. It helps portray the idea that one small decision has a huge impact on future events by using physical objects to substitute the concepts of time. Nearing the end of the story, everyone arrives back to their present time, but something seems askew and distinctly different. Noticing the dirt on his shoe, Eckels goes to examine it and notices a small creature that was “Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly. Very beautiful and very dead” (Bradbury 24). The butterfly represents the future of civilization because once Eckels destroys the butterfly’s life, he also alters the course of time. Through the symbolization of colors, one assumes that the butterfly depicts fertility, prosperity, and the unknown because Bradbury describes it as green, gold, and black. However, it will all change when the butterfly dies and this is shown from the substitution of presidents, from a favorable, well respected leader to a cruel dictator. Therefore symbolism supports the idea that time is a delicate thing with major

When you read any type of short story you get a get idea of any life lesson. Studying short story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury. The main character Eckles finds out that you shouldn’t trust everyone that you just meet, nor that you shouldn’t do something that you don’t know of.

Millions of years ago, hunting was a way of life, a way of survival. When cavemen killed an animal, they used every single piece of the animal and made certain to let none go to waste. In present day, hunting is viewed as a game. Many people hunt for the enjoyment that the adrenaline rush gives them. In this day and age, people can no longer hunt Saber-Tooth tigers, wooly mammoths, or dinosaurs, but what if there was a way to make that possible? A Sound of Thunder is a futuristic story of hunting prehistoric creatures. They could use a time machine to go back in time and hunt any animal they could dream of. The animals are carefully chosen before the hunt. If someone leaves minute traces of himself, the whole universe changes its course. A

Theme is an integral part of this story and is mostly presented through the narrator. One of the major themes of the story is conscience, in which many of the conflicts in the

“The Sound of Thunder” developed its theme of, Your Actions Have Consequences by Eckels regretting his trip to hunt a dinosaur, stepping off the path and “Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful, and very dead,” his stepping off the path and killing a butterfly altered the future in many unseen ways. “Being Prey” developed the same theme, but by a curious woman named Plumwood that wandered off the path. “As the current moved me towards it, the stick developed eyes!” this led to the struggle for survival between Plumwood and the crocodile. Even though the stories had the same theme, it was developed a bit

Theme gives the reader a general idea about what the piece of literature is about. The character’s action and thoughts takes part in creating the theme. Animal farm was a book about animals taking control of the farm from their tyrannic farmer. The animals attempts to make the farm a democracy, but Napoleon, the pig leader, takes over and eventually becomes the new tyrant. The Pearl was about a family, Kino, Juana, Coyotito, who catches a huge pearl. They go through a journey to get away from any harm such as the trackers. In the book Animal Farm and the book The Pearl, the two characters, Napoleon and the Doctor, created a theme that greed can change their perspective.