“A sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury

Humanities Summative Writing:

Steven 8-8

Never underestimate time

Have you ever wondered that a small change can lead to a big effect, a ripple effect that blasts through generation, changing everything and even wiping out humanity? The story “A Sound of Thunder” mainly talked in a futuristic time where a famous company; “Time Safaris” offered people to hunt dinosaurs by sending them back in time. One time, the protagonist Eckles went back in time 60 million years ago to hunt down a T-rex, however, he unintentionally stepped on a butterfly and killed it. This minor problem eventually leads to a major and humongous impact in the future. In the story, “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the author believes that even the smallest action usually has a significant impact on how the future will unfold.

To start with, Travis (the team leader) constantly reminded Eckels not to step off the path, and never touch or change anything, as he states:” We don’t want to change the Future. We don’t belong here in the past. Even more, he stated:” say we accidentally kill one mouse here, that means all the future families of this one particular mouse are destroyed. With a stamp of your foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a billion possible mice!” As Travis had said, we never want to change the past as it will change the future. Even as if it’s the smallest change like killing one mouse, it can lead to a whole generation wipe of this particular species of mouse and effecting all other organisms that co-live (live around) with this mouse. One little change may seem inconsequential at first sight; however, it makes a huge impact throughout time and in the future.

Further on in the story, when Eckles returned back to the future, things go wrong. Inline 443 of the text, when Eckels returned to the future, he noticed many different things, the majority of things had changed. For example, the sign of the Company had changed into a completely whole different language, even the presidential election had changed person. Furthermore, on line 451, the text stated:” It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time.” Eckels, who thought accidentally killing a butterfly 60 million years ago could have barley done any impact on the world, was stunned and frightened of the outcomes of what really happened. Only by killing one butterfly, it caused a time ripple effect that changed everything through time. Millions of generations after had vanished, many other species have gone extinct as a result as well. Just by one tiny action, will significantly change the future.

To sum it up, the book author Ray Bradbury has taught us to never change time in the past and to never underestimate it. Even as the smallest possible action could result in a gigantic change, result in the extinction of humanity and other species.

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