preview

A Sound Of Thunder Literary Analysis

Decent Essays

Leach When analyzing futuristic dystopian fiction, it is hard not to get swept away in the fantasy of it all; indeed, series and stories, such as The Hunger Games, can envelope a sensation of action and make-believe that distracts from the main purpose. Similar to this, Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” can easily distract readers from the deeper meaning that is the short story. Certainly, readers are swept away by the fantasy that is time travel and dinosaur hunting, but one must comprehend and appreciate Bradbury’s conceptualization of the delicacy of life in order to fully understand the meaning behind “A Sound of Thunder” In this overwhelmingly dystopian short story, Ray Bradbury effectively shapes his main character, Eckels, as a cowardly and inquisitive young adult. Along the story, Eckels spends an incomprehensible amount of money in order to travel back in time to hunt a dinosaur. Eckels then is exposed to the extensive rules of the …show more content…

Knowing this, combined with the fact that Eckels life was taken due to his removal of life, we can infer that Ray Bradbury’s perception of life is incredibly and emotionally heavy. Whether or not Bradbury has personally experienced a loss or alteration of life in its human form, we comprehend that he, as an author, is knowledgeable about the importance of every life, connected amongst the universe. Certainly, the quick, forced removal of Eckel’s life was not clearly a statement of living fragility; indeed, it nearly showed how disposable a person, or any living thing for that matter, truly was. Contrary to this, Bradbury portrays the “very beautiful, and very dead” butterfly as colorful and anything but languid, disregarding the fact that Eckel’s had just killed it, only intensifying Bradbury’s Delicacy

Get Access