High self-esteem causes people to believe in themselves and feel secure but too much self-esteem can cause people to not realize the difficulties of challenges. In the story “A Sound of Thunder”, the main character Eckels goes back to the past to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He goes to the past with Travis, who is the safari guide and several other hunters. The big idea of this story is about time travel and how it may cause mass-destruction in the future.
In the story A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury, the author believes that self-esteem sometimes causes people to underestimate challenges. Travis, the hunting guide, lectured Eckels on the consequences of changing the future but “Eckels, [on the metal path], aimed his rifle playfully” (Bradbury, 8). Despite Travis’s lengthy explanation on how traveling to the past might affect the future, Eckels still decides to aim his gun playfully because of the excitement and ego-boost of killing a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Eckels also had lots of self-esteem in defeating a Tyrannosaurus Rex and believing that he can kill one. Later on in the story, Eckels boasts about the fact that he will kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex with the rest of his team: “’I’ve hunted tiger, wild boar… but now, this is it’” (Bradbury, 8) but after sighting the T-Rex Eckels said that “It can’t be killed. We were fools to come. This is impossible” (Bradbury, 9). Eckels has a lot of self-esteem in killing a dinosaur, therefore deciding to attempt to go to the past but when the challenge comes Eckels finally realizes that the challenge is too big and decides to give up. This shows that because of Eckel’s self-esteem he decided to attempt a challenge which ended up being too hard.
