Ray Bradbury's Short Story 'A Sound Of Thunder'

Words: 462
Pages: 2

Have you ever regretted an action you did or didn’t take and thought, “I wonder how things would have been if I did this differently”. We are constantly making decisions that can alter our future, some actions having greater consequences than others. In Ray Bradbury’s story, “A Sound of Thunder” portrays this concept when the character “Eckles” steps on something so small, not realizing it would change everyone's life.
Growing up there has always been rules, starting out with not jumping on the bed, to no running in the hallways, then society’s laws. These rules are placed for our safety and the safety of others. In “A Sound of Thunder” there were rules, but one that they made very clear by repeating it over and over again was “Don’t go off the path… don’t go off the path… whatever you do don’t go off the path”, this one rule was to prevent any disruption they could cause. This is the concept we face in everyday life, just as Eckles died as a consequence, we too face our own.
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In the short story the workers took extreme actions to make sure they wouldn’t alter anything, even using oxygen masks so the air was untouched. “..this purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past”, sometimes we may find ourselves in a situation we don’t belong in, such as Elecks. We make decisions that put us in a tough spot and as much as we think we are repared for it, when the time comes, we aren’t. He thought he was prepared for killing the giant dinosaur, but when it was right in front of him he ran off the path and his actions cost his