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The Butterfly Effect in “A Sound of Thunder”

In the short story “A Sound of Thunder”, a man named Eckles decides to go back 60 million years to hunt a tyrannosaurus rex.  One mistake and the future could change drastically.  There is a continuous domino effect throughout the story and you can see it grows more and more.  At the start of the story, the desk man told Eckles about how in the previous year 6 guides and 12 hunters were killed.  Once the safari group made it to the past they were told to stay on the anti-gravity path to avoid disrupting the future.  Eckles pointed his gun at the pterodactyls that were flying over head which caused Mr. Travis to become cautious with him.  Once the T-rex appeared, Eckles grew very afraid and was told to go back to the time machine.  On his way back, he wasn’t paying attention and stepped off the path kicking up some dirt.  After they had killed the T-rex, Mr. Travis was furious with Eckles and threatened to leave him behind unless he dug the bullets out of the dinosaur.  Once they arrived back to the present, Eckles had realized that he had stepped on a butterfly.  Stepping on that one butterfly changed the way humans spell and ended up changing the election results.  Mr. Travis ended up shooting Eckles since he had changed the course of history.  Eckles one action (stepping off the path) caused him to change a language, the election results for president and caused his death.  The butterfly effect created by the characters decisions is very prevalent in this story and is easy to notice throughout reading.