In the short story “ A sound of thunder” a group of hunters goes back in time to kill the biggest game. It starts off where a man named Eckels is talking to the man behind the desk and has given him the required ten thousand dollars. The man behind the desk then gives him a few words of advice and talks a little about politics then sends him off to the time machine. Once they were all in the time machine with all the guns and supplies they set off to go back in time to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. While in the machine they tested their helmets and intercoms then the machine came to a stop and they stepped out on to the metal path.
They are not allowed to step off of this path because otherwise they could change the future forever. They begin to walk down the path in search of their big game that has been marked with red paint. Finally they hear the sounds of the T-Rex and once it is in sight Eckels panics and runs off screaming almost getting everyone killed. Travis the leader of the group orders them to fire and kill the T-Rex. Once the T-Rex is dead Eckels manages to get back to them but with dirt on his shoes, he had run off the metal path. Travis is yelling at him saying that he could have gotten everyone killed, and Eckels is begging for him not to tell anyone that he has run off of the path, he also offers to pay more money.
Travis then says no prove your sorry by digging out all the bullets in the T-Rex’s head as he tosses him a knife. Once all the bullets are out, they head back to the time machine and turns it on and begins the journey back to their time period. Once they arrive back to where they came from Travis asks if everything is okay and they reply yes nothing different. But just as they think everything is okay Eckels looks at the sign and relies that it is different and that it is a different alphabet. Then they look at Eckels shoes and see that he had killed a butterfly and once they relies that Travis takes a gun and shoots and kills Eckels. In this short story the theme of it is to follow the rules because if you don’t bad things will happen.
In the story Travis says “ stay on the path. Don’t go off it. I repeat, don’t go off. (Page 5) this was the main rule for them to follow, and Eckels did not follow that rule and ended up ruining the future.
We know for a fact Eckels ran off the path when Travis says “ it’s his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. ”(Page 14) here it no doubt proves to us that Eckels had ruined everything by breaking the main rule. If Eckels had listed to Travis when he said not to go off then he would not have killed the butterfly and the future would not have been changed. But him not following the rule gave the story a twist that made it more thrilling. The main conflict in the story is human nature.
The conflict is human nature because we constantly are messing with the unknown and in this story we the human kind are messing with time. In the story the hunters go back in time to where humans are not supposed to be yet, and because they went back in time they changed the future. When it wasn’t supposed to be that way in the first place. If they had not messed with time they would not have even remotely had a chance to cause the damage that they did by simply killing one little harmless butterfly. The setting in the story is both in the future and in the past, for example they start off in the safari building where the time machine is being held.
Then once they get in the time machine they end up back in time millions of years in the past. The setting is important to the story because it helps the reader see the theme of the story of exploring the unknown. In the story the setting is described with such vivid details it helps the reader’s picture what is happening. The setting of the story is extremely important to a story because it gives a better image of what is going on. All in all I believe that this short story was absolutely amazing it was thrilling on top of comical.
The story was interesting from the get go and never lost my attention. The fact that they went back in time to kill a dinosaur just to say that they have is a great idea in my opinion. Another thing in the story that kind of shocked me was the fact of the “ Butterfly effect” quite literally because Eckels stepped on a simple little butterfly and wound up changing the future in a big way such as the alphabet. So in the end “ A sound of thunder” was a great story and I enjoyed reading it a lot.
