Literary Devices InThe Sound Of Thunder, By Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is an amazing author and has his own distinct way of writing, but he always discovers a way to make his stories similar in some way. Bradbury is an American author who has won many awards. There are three stories in particular he has written, “A Sound Of Thunder”, “The Veldt”, and “The Pedestrian”. He puts the same writing technique in all of his stories, imagery. Bradbury uses imagery to grab the reader's attention by giving amazing detail and explanation on certain parts of his stories, to create an amazing picture which makes it easier to visualize.

For example, Bradbury writes “He would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.” The simile used does a great job showing the reader the setting of this scene in the “The Pedestrian”. In this scene a man is walking down the sidewalk kicking up ash-like dust. When the reader sees the image of that man, the reader gets the sense of a content and tranquil situation.

“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,

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.

Many science fiction shows, films, and novels today have been influenced by science fiction novels from the past. A few examples are Frequency,The Butterfly Effect, and A Sound of Thunder relating to A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. These films all express Bradbury’s idea of the butterfly effect and that time traveling can change the past, therefore changing the future. Although they share the same idea, they each have different outcomes.

In the short story A Sound of Thunder Ray Bradbury, many metaphors and similes are used to describe the T. Rex as an evil, giant being, who is impossible to defeat. Of course, towards the end of the story, the giant, evil, green, massive dinosaur is shot, and tree falls upon it for good measure. In the story, Eckels pays a whopping ten thousand dollars to shoot a T. Rex in 60 million years in the past. He is given a safari guide, and they set off to the Jurassic. While they are getting there through the time machine, Travis, the safari guide, tells Eckels about all the rules and precautions, so they don’t change the past. When they finally arrive, there is a metal path laid out in front of them, six inches above the ground, so they don’t contaminate the soil. The group starts walking to the T. Rex. When Eckels sees the T. Rex, the author stars describing how massive and scary it is. Eckels even gives a hyperbole for how tall the massive creature is. Eckels panics and accidentally steps off the path, killing a butterfly unknowingly. When they get back, Travis is furious for Eckels’ misstep, but Eckels tells him it’s fine. Eckels is horrified to discover that the president that was elected last time, was replaced by a dictator-like person. Travis later kills Eckels because everything is messed up. Ray Bradbury uses the T. Rex to symbolize chaos.

to buy a typewriter and rent a small office. In the early 1940's his stories

In the short story “A Sound of Thunder” Ray Bradbury tells the story about Eckles, a man wanting to time travel back to the Mesozoic Era, the age of the dinosaurs. He wants to hunt the gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex. Throughout the story Ray Bradbury uses imagery to broaden the plot and divulge the theme. The imagery helps set up all the intricate details our author deems important.The author provides us with enough imagery to develop the characters and foreshadow the plot.

Ray Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. When he was fourteen years of age he and his family relocated to Los Angeles, California. (Funk & Wagnalls) Unfortunenately I was not able to find the specific reason to why the Bradbury family relocated to Los Angeles. I do know that however Ray himself was not complaining. According to one of my sources Ray himself was “star struck” upon arrival in the city. (Funk & Wagnalls) It was while in Los Angeles that Bradbury started to write short stories. Bradbury reportedly drew most of his inspiration from reading comic strips in newspapers, magazines, and sorcery. (Funk & Wagnalls) Following his high school graduation in 1943 Bradbury became a full time writer. (Funk & Wagnalls) So throughout this paper I will talk about Bradburys beginnings, how he found success, criticism about his other works, and lastly further analyzation over his story A Sound of Thunder.

During his first story it didn’t get my attention or for me to want to more. Then after that his stories started to get me more interested in it. He seemed at the beginning to be like every other writer in a sense. Then after reading a few stories of his he seemed different to me. I don’t know what made him different but something to me made him different. Bradbury’s stories where are different in its own way. Like the sun dome it all about life on a different planet. Then with “The Fog Horn” it’s about sea creatures that come out at a single day of the year.

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 first universal theme, all events and actions are important, is better explained through the use of foreshadowing in “A Sound of Thunder”. The tour guide, Travis, repeatedly informs Eckels about the small changes in the past having tragic damage, mainly which is to not step off the path. As predicted, Eckels would step off the path. Bradbury stated, “Stuck in the mud was a brightly colored

I was walking down a neighborhood street at night and passed a house that had a yellow sign that read “Beware of Dog”. I didn’t see a dog so I assumed that the dog was inside or taking a nap somewhere. A few houses down I hear a deep evil growl; so, I slowly turn around and see a pit-bull. The monster was the size of a man, his teeth where gruesome and yellow, with long canines on each side of his mouth. Drool was dripping from his mouth as if he had rabies. Eyes as black as the night itself, glaring directly at me. It’s evil growl, low toned but load. Ears stood up pointing to the sky. I was afraid and I didn’t move, so I said, “Here boy!” The dog comes closer at a steady pace as I stood there planning my escape route. As he approached me I reached my hand out to pet him. That was one of the nicest dogs I have ever met. My story is an example of how literary devices such as foreshadowing, imagery and personification build up the mood. In the case of my story, the mood was suspenseful as if the dog was going to attack me. In “A Sound of Thunder,” Ray Bradbury uses imagery, personification and foreshadowing to set the mood.

     In his ninth story, 'The Locusts';, Ray Bradbury uses similies to envoke a response from the reader. He makes the many rockets that are landing on Mars to be just like locusts, swarming over a concentrated area and destroying it. 'And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night.'; The reader sees from the similies that the rockets were overwhelming to the Martians and they were only pests, they did not help.

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