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The Themes Of The Future In The Sound Of Thunder By Ray Bradbury

Decent Essays

“The Sound of Thunder” is a story set in the near future where time travel is possible. A few travelers and a hunting guide, Travis, decide to go to the dinosaur age and hunt to see what dinosaurs and the environment they were in was like. After, Travis gives them the rules and the hunters respect them during the trip, but one hunter, Eckels, learns the hard way that even his smallest actions can leave an enormous impact. In “The Sound of Thunder”, Ray Bradbury gives the readers a theme of how even the smallest things can impact everything else and you may not even know it. This theme that the smallest things can affect the future drastically is conveyed well and could have not been successful without the serious tone of the story and the plot. …show more content…

In this story, the hunters and the hunt leader Travis go back six million years to hunt a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Travis gives them basic rules to follow, which are to not step off of the platform and to not shoot any animal that they don’t okay, or else there will be a penalty (Bradbury 348). The main character, Eckels, steps off of the track when he gets frightened from the T-Rex and ends up killing a butterfly without realizing it (Bradbury 353). This small change in the past affects everything from that point forward. Now, nothing can play out how it was initially supposed to with the butterfly being alive and this will alter the outcomes of the future. When the hunters arrive back to the future, everything had changed. The hunters came back to a sign that read: “Tyme Sefari inc. Sefaris to any yeer en the past. Yu naim that animal wee taekyuthair yu shoot itt”. The hunters asked the man at the desk who had recently won the presidential election and he replied, “Deutscher” (Bradbury 353). Before they had left for the safari, people had be literate and the President was Keith. Eckels looked down at his shoes and spotted a “very beautiful and very dead” butterfly (Bradbury 353). Eckels realized that he upset the balance of the future by stepping on the butterfly, and now it had been dramatically …show more content…

After Eckels steps off of the path, Travis is upset and says,“This fool nearly killed us… I’ll have to report it to the government… who knows what he has done to time, to history!” (Bradbury 352). Travis even warns Eckels that he may have to kill him and he has his gun ready. These statements are dark, frightening, and serious, which gets the message across strongly. Once Travis and the rest of the hunters realize that Eckels has ruined the future, Travis decides to kill him (Bradbury 354). If the message of how small actions can affect the future dramatically was to be spread among readers, a serious tone is the best way to go. The serious tone allows readers to know that the message is worth listening to and that it is to be taken seriously because it’s an important matter and it shows how delicate the potential future

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