“A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury
By killing a single mouse that lives a million years ago, the death of that mice might cause hundreds upon thousands of species to die from starvation, completely annihilating ecosystems and inflicting chaos to rise upon every species and ecosystems there is to exist and eventually breaking the ultimate food chain of Earth. Just like in the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the theme of the story is taking what may seem like a small and insignificant action, might cause a drastic change in the future, so obviously the theme is always be careful and mindful about every action you take and everything you say. Furthermore, the concept and main idea of the story “A Sound of Thunder” is related to time traveling, the protagonist of the story is Eckels is time traveling with the Safari Guide back a million of years ago on a quest to hunt down species that has no contribution to the future of humans and society, or in other words, expendable. Coincidently, they met the Tyrannosaurus Rex. However, while the Safari guide were trying to kill the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is trying to attack them, Eckels accidentally went out of the path and stepped on the dirt on earth that existed millions of years ago. Consequently, when they got back to the current year, their society has drastically changed. From the concept and idea of the story, we can tell that the main topic of this story is mindfulness and carefulness for every action you take.
In the story “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the author believes that we must all be careful and mindful for every single action we take. For instance, in real life, saying something to really nice to your friend versus saying something unpleasant or impolite to your friend might cause a really drastic and different outcome. When Travis is explaining him how killing a mice can inflict significant damage to the future of humans, he says, “But you, friend, have stepped on one single mouse. So the cave man starves. And the cave men, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is our entire future nation.” (Bradbury 226). This quote supports the theme of the statement because it explicates to the readers how just by stepping on a single mouse, taking such an insignificant action, can create a domino effect causing a great drastic change in the future such as, mentioned in the quote; cave man starving causing millions upon billions of humans to be annihilated from the current world. The word “expendable”, by definition, means insignificant, and therefore can be destroyed. Furthermore, the quote says “‘And the cave men, please note, is not just any expendable men.” From the word expendable, we can infer that the author is trying to explicate that the death cave men are not insignificant and in fact, can create a much vaster impact to the future, which is wiping out the entire human species. This quote shows how just by taking a small action, could greatly change the future. As the story continues along its way to the very end, Eckels realized the mistake that he had made when stepping on the dirt that existed millions of years ago and also killing a butterfly, he said to himself, “can’t we take it back, can’t we make it alive again? Can’t we start over? Can’t we-” (Bradbury 236). From this quote we can suggest that Eckels is very guilty and somewhat regretted what he have done. From the sentence, “can’t’ we start over?” we can tell that Eckels is desperately regretting what he has done. This quote shows that we must all me mindful and careful about every step and action we take and everything we do, or else we will regret what we have done.