A Sound of Thunder

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by Ray Bradbury
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A Sound of ThunderMeet the Writer
Most noted for his short stories, Ray Bradbury
has also written novels, childrens books, plays,
screenplays, television scripts, and
poetry. Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois,
in 1920. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1934.
He became interested in books and writing early
in life.
Ray Bradbury
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Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury is one of those rare individuals
whose writing has changed the way people think.
His more than five hundred published works --
short stories, novels, plays, screenplays,
television scripts, and verse -- exemplify the
American imagination at its most creative.

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Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury calls himself a teller of tales and
a magic realist. He also claims to remember
everything every book hes ever read, every
movie hes seen, all the events of his life back
to and including his birth, in Waukegan,
Illinois, on August 22, 1920. All those memories
and a big imagination are the materials for the
fiction and poetry hes been publishing for more
than fifty years.
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Ray Bradbury

• Bradburys work is full of childhood imaginings,
  fantasies, and nightmares portraits of Venus
  and Mars, time travel, ageless children,
  never-ending rains but Bradbury the grown-up is
  a concerned citizen.
• His fantasy stories are often warnings against
  blind faith in science, but theyre optimistic.
  By giving strange twists to everyday objects and
  events, Bradbury challenges his readers to look
  at them as if for the first time. As a writer he
  lets readers see science through the excited
  years of children, but he also informs,
  suggesting ways to use technology more
  responsibly.

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Genre

• A genre is a category or type of literature, such
  as fiction or poetry. Each genre can be
  subdivided into more specific categories that can
  be identified by subject matter, content, or
  style. Identifying the genre of a selection helps
  a reader to establish expectations for the work.
• Readers can understand the genre of a literary
  work by analyzing its characteristics. As you
  read A Sound of Thunder, notice the clues that
  reveal the common elements of science fiction.

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Elements of Science Fiction

• Damon Knight, author, editor, critic, and founder
  of the Science Fiction Writers of America, once
  attempted to quantify the elements of science
  fiction.
• He came up with the following list derived from a
  number of previously published formal definitions
  of science fiction
• science
• technology and invention
• the future and the remote past, including all
  time travel stories
• extrapolation (speculation based on signs or
  omens)
• scientific method
• other places--planets, dimensions, etc.,
  including visitors from the above
• catastrophes, natural or manmade
• Knight concluded that a story with at least three
  of the above elements is generally perceived to
  be science fiction stories with two elements
  were borderline stories with one or no elements
  were not science fiction.

Damon Knight
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Science Fiction

• Although the term science fiction was not used
  until about 1930, science fiction tales have been
  told since before the invention of writing. One
  of the earliest science fiction writers was
  Lucian of Samosata who, around 100 BC, wrote a
  fantasy about a journey to the moon. Modern
  science fiction began to take shape in the
  nineteenth century.

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Science Fiction

• Science fiction is defined loosely as fiction
  that deals with the impact of science and
  technology on the world. Sometimes the technology
  is real, sometimes it is entirely imagined, and
  sometimes it has been imagined by an author and
  then brought to reality by scientists. Science
  fiction themes often warn of the potential for
  disaster when technology is abused.

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A Sound of Thunderby Ray Bradbury
Who controls the past controls the future.
George Orwell
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A Sound of Thunder

• In the short story, Ray Bradbury implies that
  seemingly insignificant actions can change the
  future for an entire generation.
• Before you read the story, think about the
  following questions
• How might your actions during your lifetime
  affect someone living one hundred years in the
  future?
• Do you believe that you have a responsibility to
  future generations?

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A Sound of ThunderIntroducing the Story
Its the year 2055. Eckels, a wealthy hunter,
wants to travel back in time to shoot a ferocious
dinosaur. But he gets in over his head when he
books passage with Time Safari, Inc.

• This story explores the possibility that even
  tiny changes to the environment of the past can
  drastically alter the future.

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Tyrannosaurus Rex

• The Tyrannosaurus rex lived during the late
  Cretaceous Period, between 97 and 66 million
  years ago. Scientists estimate its length at
  about 40 to 50 feet, its height at about 15 to 20
  feet, and its weight at about 5 to 7 tons.
• The dinosaurs open mouth revealed frighteningly
  sharp six-inch-long teeth with serrated edges.
  

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A Sound of ThunderIntroducing the Story
T-rex lived during the late Cretaceous Period.
What other life forms were around then?
insects similar to todays
the first flowering plants
marine invertebrates
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A Sound of ThunderLiterary Focus Style
Ray Bradbury tells this science-fiction story in
a lush and poetic style.

• He uses vivid images and imaginative figurative
  language to create an exotic setting.

• The setting and the figurative language shape a
  tense and suspenseful mood, or atmosphere.

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A Sound of ThunderLiterary Focus Style
As you read A Sound of Thunder, notice the
elements of Bradburys style.

• Diction and sentence patterns How do they create
  a distinctive writing style?

• Images Which of your senses do they appeal to?
  What feelings do they evoke for you?

• Figurative language How does it help create the
  setting? the mood?

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Diction
Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass
and tangle, a snaking and humming of wires and
steel boxes, at an aurora that flickered now
orange, now silver, now blue. There was a sound
like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time, all
the years and all the parchment calendars, all
the hours piled high and set aflame.
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Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing - Lesperance's explanation to
Eckles on the dangers of small changes in the
past having catastrophic effects on the future
foreshadows the changes that occur. The constant
warnings to stay off the path indicate that
Eckles will leave the path
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Suspense
- Bradbury uses foreshadowing, dangerous action,
and pacing to create suspense.
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The Butterfly Effect
"The butterfly effect, first described by Lorenz
at the December 1972 meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in
Washington, D.C., vividly illustrates the
essential idea of chaos theory. In a 1963 paper
for the New York Academy of Sciences, Lorenz had
quoted an unnamed meteorologist's assertion that,
if chaos theory were true, a single flap of a
single seagull's wings would be enough to change
the course of all future weather systems on the
earth. By the time of the 1972 meeting, he had
examined and refined that idea for his talk,
"Predictability Does the Flap of a Butterfly's
Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?" The
example of such a small system as a butterfly
being responsible for creating such a large and
distant system as a tornado in Texas illustrates
the impossibility of making predictions for
complex systems despite the fact that these are
determined by underlying conditions, precisely
what those conditions are can never be
sufficiently articulated to allow long-range
predictions."
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Butterfly Effect
All right, Travis continued, say we
accidentally kill one mouse here. That means all
the future families of this one particular mouse
are destroyed, right? Right. And all the
families of the families of the families of that
one mouse! With a stamp of your foot, you
annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a
thousand, a million, a billion possible
mice! So theyre dead, said Eckels. So what?
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Butterfly Effect
So what? Travis snorted quietly. Well, what
about the foxes thatll need those mice to
survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For
want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a
lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite
billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and
destruction. Eventually it all boils down to
this fifty-nine million years later, a caveman,
one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting
wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But
you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in
that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So
the caveman starves. And the caveman, please
note, is not just any expendable man, no.
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The Butterfly Effect
He is an entire future nation. From his loins
would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one
hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization.
Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a
people, an entire history of life. It is
comparable to slaying some of Adams
grandchildren. The stomp of your foot, on one
mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of
which could shake our earth and destinies down
through Time, to their very foundations. With the
death of that one caveman, a billion others yet
unborn are throttled in the womb.
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The Butterfly Effect
Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills.
Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and only
Asia waxes healthy and teeming. Step on a mouse
and you crush the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and
you leave your print, like a Grand Canyon, across
Eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born,
Washington might not cross the Delaware, there
might never be a United States at all. So be
careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!
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The Climax
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When He Left, The Sign Read
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Things Change
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on
the office wall, the same sign he had read
earlier today on first entering. Somehow, the
sign had changed TYME SEFARI INC.SEFARIS TU ANY
YEER EN THE PAST.YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.WEE TAEK
YU THAIR.YU SHOOT ITT.
The point is that language itself had evolved
differently based on one tiny butterfly.
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He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited,
shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the
room he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the
safety catch, and raise the weapon.
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The Butterfly Effect
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A Sound of ThunderReading Skills Cause and
Effect
The plot of A Sound of Thunder is based
on a theoretical cause-and-effect chain that
might look something like this
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A Sound of ThunderSummary

• This science fiction story begins in the year
  2055, the day after an election in which Keith, a
  democrat, wins out over Deutscher, a fascist.
  Time travel is possible and Eckels, a wealthy
  hunter, goes, goes on a prehistoric safari to
  shoot a dinosaur.
• As Eckelss party travels back in time, Travis,
  the leader, warns the hunters not to stray from a
  prelaid anti-gravity Path, theorizing that the
  minutest damage to the environment could have
  serious reverberations for the future.

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A Sound of ThunderSummary

• Even the tyrannosaur they are going to shoot is
  chosen because it would have died minutes later
  anyway. When the time comes to make the kill,
  Eckels panics and runs away, stumbling off the
  Path. Travis is furious.
• After the party returns to 2055, Eckels senses
  that things are subtly different. He then
  discovers a dead butterfly on the sole of his
  shoe.
• After finding out that now Deutscher has
  triumphed over Keith, Eckels realizes the
  magnitude of his actions he has changed the
  course of his countrys history. The storys
  climax comes when Travis shoots Eckels.

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A Sound of Thunder

• Rich with simile and metaphor
• Explores sciencethe chaos theory
• Gives the reader so much to think aboutWhat if
  one small event in your life had changed? How
  would it affect who you are today?
• Are you making negative choices today that will
  affect generations to come?