The Butterfly Effect in “A Sound of Thunder”

Butterfly Effect in “A Sound Of Thunder”

One small change in a situation can drastically change the outcome of an event, this is known as the “Butterfly Effect”. During the short story “A Sound of Thunder” a man by the name of Eckels sets off to a company called Time Safari Inc. to go on his first time traveling hunting trip. Eckels decides he wants to go back sixty million years to kill a T-Rex. The decisions that Eckels made while on this time travel hunting trip created a butterfly effect. This first started when he made the choice to go hunting with his cocky attitude, this eventually lead to Eckel’s pointing his rifle sarcastically at the Pterodactyls flying above. But his self assured attitude came to an end with his first encounter with the T-Rex. During Eckels encounter, Eckel starts to panic and begin to back out of this hunting trip.  Travis tells Eckels to run back to the time machine if he is scared. As the constant foreshadowing in the beginning of the story suggests Mr. Eckels tripped off the path not knowing he had crushed a butterfly. Tripping off the path made huge changes to their world when they would return. The language is completely different, the presidential election was the reverse of what it was when they left for their trip. Creating all this mischief created a butterfly effect on Eckels because as Mr. Travis said in the beginning of the trip  “Don’t go off. For any reason!”( Bradbury 2). When the crew got back from hunting their T-Rex, Eckels had realized he had crushed a butterfly when he fell off the path thus resulting in the change of the world and his execution by Mr. Travis.