The Lightning Thief 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.

Despite all their similarities, The Greeks and Romans engaged in substantive culture differences. Their religions derived from a complex set of gods and goddesses, called deities, who were seen as regulating human life. Since the Romans embraced culture from the Greeks, many traditions were the same. However, the Greek and Roman culture, although similar, are very different and appealing. For instance, the Greeks did not acknowledge an all-powerful god; they believe that deities controlled everything that transpired on earth. In other words, the Greeks sought religious cults to explain the forces that shape the world (Bentley et al, 2008 p.143).

In the story, “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury a man by the name of Mr. Eckels goes on a safari expedition with a company called Time Safari Inc., sixty-five million years back in time. During this expedition they find a Tyrannosaurus Rex and Eckels becomes nervous and freaks out, after that he seems scared and steps off a path which is strictly forbidden as it can alter the timeline, in doing so he crushes a butterfly and changes what will become the present. Through this story Ray Bradbury is trying to convey the theme of all of your actions, even small ones, can grow and form into much greater consequences and outcomes. We shouldn’t be blind to the consequences of our actions.

“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 both Greek and Roman civilizations, mythology played an important part in their empire’s success. Both of these civilizations were polytheistic religions. Likewise, they had major and minor gods and goddesses as part of their religion as well. However, since the Roman Empire conquered many cultures including the Greeks, their gods blended with many similarities with the gods that the Ancient Greeks worshipped.

Rick Riordan’s ‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ focuses on Greek mythology and interprets this into a children’s story. Throughout the story, there are many references and adaptations to mythological tales, and each one is portrayed in a different way. Riordan writes this story as though Hercules, Zeus and Poseidon were still around today, and this would be the effect they would have on people in this day and age.

Hundreds of years ago people did not have the technology to explain different forces of nature. They created gods, each with separate powers, to rule their domains. Some of the gods were merciful, some were wicked, and others were merely servants of more powerful gods. Looking at the gods, it is easy to tell what the civilization most valued. I am going to look at the Greek and the Norse gods to compare what was most important to their societies.

In the text “A Sound of Thunder” a common theme is that little actions have big consequences. “A Sound of Thunder” is a short story by Ray Bradbury that takes place in the future, and is about a man named Eckels. Eckels goes to a business that allows people to go back in time and kill an animal that lived long ago. In this case, Eckels wants to kill a T-Rex. He goes back to the time that the T-Rex was about to die, so that way, he wouldn’t affect the future. The guide, Travis, warns him multiple times to stay on the path, which is a metal trail that hovers above the ground, to prevent damaging it. However, the T-Rex is much bigger than Eckels suspected, and the safari men all aim and desperately fire at it, hoping that they will get lucky and at least cripple the beast. In the struggle, Eckels accidentally falls off the path, and, upon their return to the present, there were big changes, including the election that was happening at that time, and even the language had changed the way that we spell things. Enraged, Travis pulls out his gun and shoots Eckels.

Both the Greeks and Romans were accepting of other gods from different cultures. Romans adopted different gods and made them a part of the Roman religion. This would soon change as the Christian religion began to rise in popularity. In Roman society Christianity was not accepted they “believed it was anti-Roman and considered it atheist, it was outlawed, and people were executed”

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?

In the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, Eckels arrives at Time Safari, the first ever company to take people back in time. Eckels is told they will be going back in time to hunt a tyrannosaurus. Travis his guide and the other men get into the time machine with Eckels. Travis explains how critical all of the rules are and how one small change in the past can change the future drastically. They arrive and find their dinosaur, Eckels gets scared so he runs away falling off the path and killing a butterfly. Travis yells at Eckels and makes him clean up everything. Such as removing bullets from the dinosaur. They arrive in the future and find because of Eckels changing the past, the future has changed all for the worst. Travis is so angry he kills Eckels. In the book one lesson we can find is “One small change can make a big difference.”

“ ‘I’m supposed to go to the Underworld and confront the Lord of the Dead.’...’Find the most powerful weapon in the universe.’...’And get it back to Olympus before the summer solstice in ten days.’ “ The Lightning Thief is a book in which Percy Jackson, the hero, and his friends Annabeth and Grover, must undertake a quest to reclaim Zeus’s master bolt from Hades. “The Hero’s Journey” is a pattern of stages that many heroes experience. Throughout Percy’s quest, the archetype of “The Hero’s Journey” is followed. A few stages of “The Hero’s Journey” that Percy undergoes are The Ordinary World, The Supreme Ordeal, and Confronting the Father.

Words, something we blindly hear, listen and feel. Humans do not think twice of the harm or good doing power they possess. In the novel, The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, shows how words can give the characters such robustness during the war. As well as how strong they use their words so they can get out of difficult situations. Adolf Hitler, Max Vandenburg, and Liesel Meminger are characters that hold power throughout the novel in both positive and negative ways.

Classical Greek culture had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean region and Europe. Greek culture influenced the development of Roman civilization because at first Rome absorbed ideas from Greek colonists in southern Italy, and they continued to borrow from Greek culture after they conquered Greece. Ancient Greece has had an enormous amount of impact on culture in the western world. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western civilization. Rome conquered the Greek empire and its civilization, but Greek culture conquered imperial Rome. Furthermore, the Romans willingly

Western civilization was the birthplace of Ancient Greek Culture (Athens University 2010). Many magnificent achievements in areas of government, science, philosophy and the arts that still influence our lives produce Ancient Greece (Athens University 2010). Continuing most notably into Classical Greece, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its successor the culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, beginning in Mycenaean Greece (World Book Advance 2012). The Persian also left an influence on the Greek culture as well. The Roman Civilization came into the picture around the 6th century BC. Romans conquered and over one of the biggest chunks of land in the era. According to Rome Wikipedia the period of the ancient Roman civilization, the post-Roman Republic was characterized by government and headed by emperors and large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Africa and Asia.