43 pages • 1 hour read
Ray BradburyA Sound Of Thunder
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Butterfly
The golden butterfly that Eckels steps on in his hurry back to the time machine represents the delicate balance of the natural world. It can also represent unforeseen consequences, mistakes, and points of no return. Being so tiny, the butterfly initially is not even noticed in the scuffle that ensues after the T. Rex is shot. It is therefore ironic that its death is the cause of the changes that follow. However, this kind of event is exactly what Travis warned against, and the clearest example of the importance of each element of an ecosystem. This is even more striking in comparison to the T. Rex’s death, which was not the cause of change. Instead, the seemingly insignificant death of the butterfly is the event that triggers the cascading effects that leads to Deutscher’s election.
The butterfly’s beauty, fragility, and tiny size contrasts with the T. Rex’s violent, huge, and intimidating presence. However, both the dinosaur and the butterfly have gold and green coloring. This similarity links the two and implies that their lives, deaths, and roles in the ecosystem are equally meaningful.
“A Sound of Thunder” has been wrongly credited as the origin of the “butterfly effect,” which posits that a tiny event—like a butterfly flapping its wings—could lead to the development of a major event, such as a hurricane. The story is, however, a striking illustration of this idea.
The Wondrous and Extraordinary
Wondrous and extraordinary sights, sounds, and phenomena are common in this story. Most obviously is time travel itself, which is presented as something new and uncommon enough for it to be Eckels’s first time seeing a time machine. Time travel is still novel, very expensive, and presented as a marvel of technological prowess. Time Safari’s flowery advertisement conveys the wonder of time travel, as it paints a picture of a marvelous reversal of time as everything “flies back to seed” (103).
Travis adds to this reverent image of time travel in his speeches in the time machine and in the past, where he describes that they are in an ancient time before famous figures religious and political figures such as Christ, Moses, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon. Still, the time machine is presented as somewhat menacing, too, as it “burns time” and “howls.”
Bradbury also describes the ancient landscape in wondrous terms; he describes the Pterodactyls as “gigantic bats of delirium and night fever” and “strange reptilian birds.” He writes of “Far birds' cries” (107) and “the smell of tar and an old salt sea, moist grasses, and flowers the color of blood” (107), using sensory language to convey the strangeness of the landscape. Additionally, as Eckels describes it, the hunting safari to the past “makes Africa seem like Illinois” (106), which exoticizes Africa while depicting the past as even more exotic than this.
Burning and Fire
The metaphor of time as a fire or being burned is used frequently in the story. Early on, Bradbury describes the time machine making “a sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time” (103). As the hunting party travels back in time, Bradbury writes that “the years blazed around them” (105). When the party shoots the dinosaur, their guns “blazed fire” (105), perhaps implying that both the acts of going back in time and shooting are destructive and cause “burning.” This association of both time and guns with fire implies that time, too, is a destructive force.
The Threat of Violence
Throughout the story, the possibility of violence looms in the form of Deutscher, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and even the guns the characters carry. The very nature of the expedition is violent, carried out not for survival but for sport. These violent elements all contribute to rising tension in the story, which climaxes at the moment when the dinosaur dies a violent, repulsive death after being shot by the hunting party. Bradbury’s figurative language also contains violent elements. Bradbury describes the flowers as “the color of blood” (107). The metaphorical idea of burning time, too, relates to violence and destruction.
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